your first year

[Greg Chrise]

What is at risk? Someone elses money? or your own achievement unlocked. You can get rid of all things scary and risky by simply being the one. Is it a waste? Is it the most expensive party ever or was it some deal that promised someone else something. Unfortunately in the real world these days even no intrest loans are hard to pay back. Don't have things hanging over your head or in your heart and start a haunt.

It isn't a high close sales job trying to get the non refundable deposit, or bank on restocking fees or late charges. There is no definite way to know you are going to make money until you make money. Everything is like that unfortunately. Sometimes you make money and then surprise, it no longer works that way. Sometimes it doesn't actually turn a profit after 5 years. Some times it is actually like being a philanthropist and it costs money every year no matter what you do or who helps.

Just be totally prepared. It might be a tax write off you have needed all along. That you didn't realize you could spend $6,000 a year on haunt materials instead of paying income taxes. And it was fun. I had someone say, shame on my charity event that if it doesn't make money you can't keep playing. Sure I can. It helps the community. I could until the core business that really fed it got slow. Then you discover the community was rather resourceful with out you giving your hard earned money. How fun is that?

In the real world business is sort of like a poker game. 6 people put up their money and over time everyone loses their money except one player gets the $150,000. Some how it all worked out that way, skill, luck of the draw? Strategy? It was just his time to hit? So this is like an advertising region or ticket buying population. But if you could lose that amount of money there were some odds you would win. Six to one you just spent some money. Now if you spent other peoples money and dreams you aren't going to be very popular. So to, who ever sponsors you to play that big card game needs to be daddy war bucks and already happy that he has a player in the game.

If you own everything, you can roll over and over until everything hits just right and have a payday. That might take 20 years of just going through the motions and then over night you are a success. Or you might have beginners luck and not know really how that happened and keep losing until you are labeled a loser. It is better to pace it and finally hit is 20 years later. Are the same people that started going to have 20 years worth of staying power? It does happen. Not for chump change.

Analysis of haunts that go big time every year, they cash out every year. Then miraculously find a way to make it all happen again for the next year and totally cash out. Except for the top 13 best haunts. But other than them, it is like a year long cycle of that story of dropping one guy off in a town with limited means and see if he can come up with something.

It is a total life style. I have had the pleasure of seeing so many people thinking they had some brilliant business hit rock bottom to discover they really only had a life style all along and all those days of not paying yourself, eating cheap to have money to do things with the business was all for nothing. Again sometimes 20 years down the line comes a holy crap moment. They thought big debts would bring amazingly huge pay outs, certainly it is 3rd grade math! It has to work, it always has! Nope.

None of this is any reason to stop. I'm just saying don't over extend money, friendship or family to do it. It should begin small and progress to something successful. If you are going to spend $150,000 and see 800 customers, you might as well poop yourself right now. There has to be something a little closer to break even spending unless you just can't stand those stacks of cash laying around. Even if you hope and dream for 7500 customers the first year the haunt needs to only cost $90,000 with all the expenses paid. Or it sure would be nice to take a $10,000 haunt and 3,000 in advertsing in a $20,000 building and make $90,000. That's more like it. But likely you aren't going to have more than a 30% increase per year in attendance no matter how much you spend. For 800 people you get a $25,000 building donated, sponsors do the advertising and the haunt costs $6,000 to $10,000.

Instead of going on a cruise or going to see Mickey every year you have a haunt.

[No_Regret]

Greg, I guess what I am still stuck up on is...you gotta have money to make money. Its hard for me to save up a large amount of funds, when only making $10.30 an hour. I know its not a big excuse, but I find myself asking all the time...how am I going to be able to start up a successful haunt when i'm not making very much money at all to begin with beforehand? It makes me feel like I almost NEED to go to a loan officer to ask for money.

[Greg Chrise]

Are you contemplating spending way too much on advertising? Do you have people vowing in their personal meditation spaces to make sure they never give you a dime because of your highly saturated low quality commercials? Have you become the obnoxious car salesman?

It used to be that you could expect to spend $2 to $3 per customer to get people to find out about your haunt. However the people spending that much never really proved to be a success and that was SO 10 years ago. Larry's history of haunted houses points out the value of the internet for adertising. With good websites, lots of social marketing, picking an easy to look up domain name and making sure it is on top of the search listing, a little radio and nice posters, I'm gonna say the actual cost is down below $1 a customer these days. Who does the work has changed and how much spam people are willing to take is something they are sensitive to.

The goal should be the add doesn't repeat as often as the listener might want so they have to investigate the web and see your ticket information, prices and further information.

If you have a long complicated domain name, there are other haunts with the same name that are huge but in other parts of the country that are going to squelch anything you put out there, life is going to suck for you.

Participate in or start a little booth or billboard for all haunts at the seasonal Halloween stores. Be the one with the glossy professional postcard sized information.

Even though people will indeed come from 150 miles away, the core of attendance will be from a 30 mile radius. Using census information what is that population? The 30 mile radius is how far people have no problem traveling for a special event with a limited time to see it. You should have a goal of reaching 1% of that population. Try as you might, some will see only 70% or 0.7% and others will have no problems reaching 1.5% of this population. Figuring out why it is not happening is a long list of things that just spending tons more advertising money is not going to make up for.

If you are intrested in making money or a decent return on your investment, you can't be picturing all your 65 year old friends at a Halloween hoe down as the big spectacular event, your children making a buck selling cider and all the kids from church coming in droves. You might have to be multi lingual depending on where you are at. Multi cultural and as far as customers go have no bias as to what backgrounds they might have. Otherwise you are going to have a big private party and there is no resaon to advertise to a wider population. Some locations a 30 mile radius includes the ghettos of the world and these might be your customers like it or not.

People start out with a location because it is affordable or available rather than where is a good market that has no dense competition. Yet in fact the ghettos of the world are actually great high turn out customers. Your advertising can subtley display whether it is okay for them to attend. Do you show all races going through the haunt? Does your web site have choices for other languages? I watched an old guy get up and attempt to give a speech and the young haunt crowd was like yeah what ever grandpa but, he proved it, his attendance was a lot higher than everyone elses. Of course no one ever noticed that or had any idea who he was or got any feed back. He spent all his time appealing to potential customers rather than other haunts. He remained totally unnoticed and made the big bucks and returned back to his little town to buy major property and no one noticed. No one had the time to complain or declare to other customers it isn't any good or anything.

Are you going to spend money hoping other haunts will send you customers and impress them? It isn't going to happen. Not to any dramatic degree. Why would they start an information booth completely manned to let everyone know where the next closest haunt is. Or one you should see unless they are very good friends of yours. Even then we are talking 3 potential customers out of thousands you do need to focus on.

Are your actors good looking people? Are they totally corn fed or zombies on meth? If you are running it as a business this does matter. It will cost you and you won't even know it.

Are you asking people to park their car in a swamp? Or what is about to become a swamp if it rains just a little bit?

You should have a facade that makes the place sort of a sight seeing venue off season as well. Is it on the wrong side of the building? Shouldn't it face the more traveled road? Able to be seen? Is the ugly side of your compound all that people see and make them wonder who would care? It is possible to have many facades to accomlish this. Some of it is not the entry of the house but all displays to give off a certain quality. If those non entry facades are just as detailed as the main entry you really have it going on.

Do you really have nice signage or are you putting up just a vinyl banner that proclaims "haunted house"

IS your event one long string of 3 attractions or are there 3 seperate entry queue lines with each having a nice facade to keep everyone excited. What you offer at the attraction is your word of mouth that either happens or does not. There are opportunities and then there are that's all you have chosen to consider for the customers prespective.

[Greg Chrise]

My town is a poplation of 95,000. With all the little towns in a 30 mile radius the total population is about 120,000. Some of the web marketing is going to be available to the whole country but in reality I might see 10 people from other lands and am still only going to spend real money targeting the local market.

If I had no idea what I was doing I would over spend the following.

4 radio stations at $1000 each all types of music and some live remotes total $4,000
A web site paid too much for good grafix and pictures $4,000
Fliers Posters and signs $1000.
Grand total so far $9,000 that I can actually do myself for half that price.

So this puts me at into a market that sees 10,000 at one haunt and 4,000 at another two smaller haunts, actual market redeveloped over about 10 years total 14,000 proven patrons that can increase 20 to 30% per year depending on the economy and what is happening with the population segments. This is actually 11.66% of the local population go to haunts where as in a huge town it might be 1% to 1.5% as a goal

The desired demographic is the haunt that see 10,000 people which would be about 8.3% of the public. At 9,000 I have wil have spent 90 cents per customer to get them here. Not including spending the entire year on all free advertising and on going social media that is built over time. Lets say I'm somehow going to be disiplined and spend 5 hours a week on solid social marketing. I want to make my involvement have some value so I will say I just hired myself for $30 per hour. $150 per week for 52 weeks is $7800. We'll say this took another $200 in office expenses such as coffee, cream and sugar for a nice round figure of $8,000.

My grand total is now $17,000 only I'm not really going to spend that money because it hasn't been made yet. It doesn't get made or paid until tickets are sold and customers are happy. So I'm really only spending $4500 as only 3 radio stations actually want compensated, the fourth is on a trial basis and wants to participate. That's $3,000. The website s really only going to cost $1000 because I will find some one with skills that is actually needing the work rather than call some marketing firm in New York City. I still need at least $500 into posters and fliers. So to me, this means I have to cover $4500 in expenses somehow and this means I need 5 sponsors that will benefit from the advertising campaign or want to be somebody or feel charitable or want to be part of something bigger than themselves. The coffee budget is still going to exist so I have about $300 really taken in fo my efforts before any tickets have been sold other than spending So many hours a week, it has really cost nothing. It has earned some tradeable value.

Final cost per customer is less than zero and 260 hours worth of work. This $17,000 value cost zero and brought 10,000 customers. Say the first year was a little rough getting attention and I only got 7500 to get off the couch. My ticket price should be at least $10 a person. It will increase over the years a dollar to $13 a ticket. Withi more haunts will approach $15 and $18 combo tickets. That first year will be 7500 at $10 a pop. That's $75,000 for a small 3,000 SF haunt or maybe $13 for an 8,000 SF haunt bringing in $97,500. So in actual size, the different available income is $22,500 in more income potential. Was it worth spending the money to make that extra 22K the first year? No. A bigger attraction has bigger over head expenses and is definitely going to get hit with right out of the box compliancy issues that will take that full amount of money or more. A bigger haunt is more scary to the local officials at saftey concerns than an innocent little starter haunt. Even if Im sitting on stacks of cash, the market does not yet deserve this kind of spending.

[Greg Chrise]

We wil go nuts here and pay everyone. I want 40 actors in a 3,000 SF haunt 6 hours a night at $12.50 each after taxes. That's $3,000 per night I don't have yet. I will be open at least nights per week for 4 weeks and end up with 12 nights at $3,000. So I have a payroll bill for $36,000 out of my $75,000 potentially earned.

Still so many will help just because they want to. Security and sound and lighting equipment can all be on contract and leased with a pay off in November. Paid out of the money I made from tickets. So how has this cost $150,000 so far? It hasn't.

So far it has only cost me hours a week, 260hours a year and throw in my time for set up and operaton and tear down of the haunt. 72 hours open. Maybe 80 hours set up and tear down and administering all this stuff, total 412 hours and if you know what you are doing, this is high. I still have $36,000 that will come in from tickets. At $30 an hour I have only earned $12,360 out of that. So this leaves 23,000 available for rent, compliance with safety, insurance and the cost of the haunt itself and the materials for the props and costumes.

So on a small haunt, you get ripped off on insurance and pay maybe $3,000. You might actually have an accumulated electric bill of $1000 over the months of set up operation and tear down. If you do a charity haunt all these things and the building too are expenses they cover all the time anyhow and have no idea how much it costs as they don't get to see the books and thus it is free in your calculations. All the help might have only cost $1500 in costumes and yet more sponsors provided meals and goodies to the actors and help.

You use small businesses also starting up wishing to have some notch on their resume to prove to other potential customers that they can successfully complete the tasks and services they are trying to market. In the early days I would build facades and caves, do set design for the cost of the materials alone. I was able to sell the idea I can do this for any attraction like a lazer tag or water park or family entertainment center for only putting in some free labor. There are others out there willing to lend a hand in a similar fashion. To actually try their hand at lighting and sound, or scenic design so they know they can do it. You can find brand new electricians, brand new what ever start ups and give them a big opportunity to say they have done something, been around a certain type of environment and you are a reference for them they may not have had at all. In later years you wil be confindent with the fact you do make money and can pay them and they are already trained in your evironment to come in and do things efficiently.

I'm still at $19,000 not spent yet. Or not made yet. The wall system for a 3,000 SF haunt with big open corridors can be done with 120 panels, the whole outer edge is open for access with one large open outdoor scene in the center running the whole length that is actually a planned access and fire break even inside a building. Really allthough it is all blended together and decorated and one long end hall is the chainsaw run, I really only have 2,000 SF of walls set up in two sections. At $30 each the 120 walls cost $3600. So far this is the only thing I'm actually going to have to buy and make ready ahead of time. With full scale detailing I might spend 2 hours per wall including going to get the wood. I have invested 240 hours. This can be done in 5 hours a week and actually what ever is not assembled yet completed during set up. This might be one year at 5 hours a week and then the second year is all the 5 hours a week marketing. No matter what I'm stuck with a monthly payment of about $125 a month to store this crap somewhere. So the first year I spend $1500 on storage if I don't already have About a 15 by 30 space available I'm already paying for. It doesn't matter what I do, this is the one cost that doesn't go away and can't really be sponsored by others with good concience. It keeps my ownership in years of ticket sales and income.

This total 10 hours a week can be done all in one year but, it is better to have things done and for real and not have the pressure. You already know the quality of what you have, can relate pictures to potential sponsors, even set up rooms somewhere to be photo ops and even whole movies can be set up to promote the haunt yet you realy due to the magic of film or digital magic only set up one room. A whole 90 SF at a time. A whole room can be set up and demo and torn down in about 3 hours.

The bays at my shop actually have an overhead of $250 each for a 14 by 24. I can actually go cheaper by using storage garages 15 by 30 that a boat of RV would normally be parked in for $125 per month. Generally you build a room or two at a time, document them and store them away somewhere. Even semi trailers when you compare expense end up costing more than this $125 per month. It looks cool to have semis but doesn't save any money.

Basically for a $3,000 to $5,000 per year total commitment in money you saved or made somehow, you have created a base cash flow of $75,000 per year.

[Greg Chrise]

SO far in this scenario we have paid the actors, gotten contracts for all the fire extinquishers, sound lighting, maybe spent $1500 on costumes, $3600 on a wall system, and have a storage bill of $125 per month.

Now how you handle the location is another thing. For $19,000 you should be able to do something. You only need 3,000 SF, you don't need an old million square foot Walmart building. Even if you have to forgo paying yourself the first year it can be done. If you can lease a place in the fall, you shift your little storage locations to the permanent one right off the bat. Or return to the little ones having only rented for 2 to 3 months.

So if you get 5 people together that each have $20,000 or $25,000 to invest, you can see in a smaller town they are going to be dissappointed with that fast money turn around and big returns on their capital. So don't do it. If you really wanted to divy up your money it could be done with 5 people that have $2,000 to lose on the biggest party they have ever had. Or it can be one person just holding off on that second car, going on a vacation or buying a big screen TV.

I will warn you that 20 years of delayed satisfaction gets really old. In the big city, there are haunts that are really only 4,000 SF making half a million per year. They all started somewhere. If you really did get ahold of $150,000 are you going to take two years off and do $12,000 worth of work? That is going to catch up with you. Wonder why lots of these haunts only last 2 years? I haven't even gotten into actually having 4 to 6 people that can actually do something and how fast it can really all be done. Still, that doesn't make you as the owner magically worth $50,000 per year. That doesn't happen until you are actually making that much per year that isn't ear marked for some expense.

Maybe if you had 5 haunts and could get into 5 hours a day per haunt. If you really empowered so many people to spend $150,000 right now and paid them all, you still only made $75,000 and basically lost $75,000. You will never make that back as every year will have $75,000 in expenses. Maybe over 10 years? Yet most seasonal deals cash out every year on the year. So who gets left holding the bag and for how much? How many people got way too much money for things that didn't pay off or prove to be necessary?

Then you get into analyzing how intimate smaller numbers of customers can be that might be more desireable and cause less hassles with the public officials and seeing 4,000 customers per year, intentionally limiting your advertsing skills becomes more realistic. Cutting down on how many hours you put into this and that. Or going gung ho and doing everything from start to finish in about 5 months full time. What happens when you put a 3 inch screw through your good hand or fall off a ladder and rip your jaw off? Is this physical activity something you do every day or is there kind of a whole body learning curve to be concerned about. Have you turned your life into a national geograhic special where at the gold mine in africa the workers might make 50 cents a week, live right at the mine and might only go home once every two months with their earnings of course after paying their debt at the company store. Working from first light to after dark eating dirt in the hot sun with leprosy and bandages cost 50 cents.

Or you can have it all done, paid for in advance and have the tools to do it at a reasonable pace. How long can you move your whole body around like it is an Olympic event? How long are olympic events? A few minutes?

Even machines can only carry so much at a time. I spent one Saturday night the haunt was open rebuilding the rear end on my truck. It came apart from carrying too much finally just at the 3rd week of the season and The haunt ran with out me as I needed the truck to get to work on Monday. Of course not everyone can just get down and rebuild their own rear end/differnential so maybe there is something wrong with me. It would have cost anyone else several days off and $600. I put it all back together for about $40. But, that is how you have to roll in the non high dollar world. This same truck hauled the haunt out at the end of the season.

Can you actually have the haunt run without you? Was all of your development actually done in advance to allow this? How many years did it take for this to realy transpire as possible? If everything is paid for and already done you have an advantage. You can actually focus on what has to be done. And things will need to be done.

You may have scared a herd of 600 pounders and have to rebuild 500 SF of the haunt in about 20 minutes. You never know and you are going to have to be physically rested enough to do it. By the way, this is another reason to have several haunts with each a different entry and queue line. Don't string 3 haunts one after another. I never did that and have been in lines at haunts for hours where something was being taken care of holding up all 3 themes. Reseting the scares? What are they building walls from scratch and Home Depot just closed?

You really haven't made it on the return of your investment until there are several haunts. Still the entire cash flow system only needs tops about $10,000 put up from the first year. And that might represent 3 to 4 years of actually gathering resources. There is a fine line between bragging about how much stuff cost and how much it really cost. Every stupid article written by someone that has never actually owned their own business or been self employed says to have 2 years income and all the expenses of the business saved up before you start. Really, then what. That would be great but it is always a whole lot blurrier than that if you actually do it and the resources cross over from so many places and you actually get things done.

Just saying it cost $150,000 doesn't mean anything. It really cost $10,000. If it was all to be sold as the crap it is, it might be worth $2500. The end goal is to have a long term cash flow and whether it came from loans or what have you, limiting expense and percentages is efficiently the only way to progress. I'm not saying to be cheap but many of the expense can be cut to 1/3rd if you just don't pretend to be mister money bags with other peoples money. If you do that maybe in the end 1/3rd is actually yours. Bragging rights or making an income.

[Greg Chrise]

You can feel real good about yourself being popular with the radio sales guys, the insurance salesmen, the land lords of the world, the advertising guys, the printing dudes of the world, even the vendors at the haunted trade show. You can have them know your name at the bank and so on. These are all people supposed to be serving you not who you need to be popular with.They will all talk bad behind you back anyhow of how pathetic it all is compared to other things they get involved with.

The focus should not be on who is going to cost you money, in fact these are all the people you need to become and replace and get their share of your event. You should focus on being popular with customers, not magical spending equals magical returns somehow.

[naberhoodhaunts]

Greg thanks once again for your insight and advice. Also thanks to everyone that has posted to this thread for your help.

[naberhoodhaunts]

well just to let everyone know i should find out this week if i have a location for a small charity haunt. its a start most likely a 2500 to 3000 ft haunt. will not make any money but should be able to make what i put into it. for now that is all i want, of coarse the charities will get most of the money.

[Greg Chrise]

Yay!........

[Greg Chrise]

This morning I wondered to myself what everyone is spending $150,000 on and if you had 6 investors that each had somehow hoarded $25,000 to come up with that money?

Perhaps 25 K each on the haunt, rent, insurance and advertising, fire system upgrades, high dollar store bought props and costumes, your lunch money for a year. Then it would have to be pretty fantastic charging $20 per ticket to be able to pay all the investors their percentage. The second year you might have some of those things out of the way like the haunt, props and costumes, fire systems. So the second year it could be cut down to rent, advertising and insurance and lunch money. Then supposedly you begin to profit.

Of course as I suggested a lot of those things do not cost $25,000 each to provide or can be done over several years. Each item you scratch off the list is another thing that brings you closer to being an overnight success. In doing it for a charity and working toward any compensation at all works. You end up with a haunt of the proper size and al the experience. The charity covers the rent, the insurance, the high dollar props and costumes don't have to happen, the advertising can be done for very little money. Of course your lunch money comes from some other source of income but, you are scratching off all these things on the list. The main thing is coming up with all the things required to fill so many square feet with things made yourself and coming up with your dream list of rooms and themes that may not happen until later down the road. You sort of have to think of the charity haunt as perhaps the rough draft for your various scary approaches and they get tested for lameness or discovered to be wonderful.

It becomes sort of a portfolio of what could be done, a resume of what you can occasionally do for people that do have $150,000 and some crazy deadline.

Of couse where the $150,000 guys screw up is that it takes several years to get that minimum $180,000 to pay back all the investors and then they need more investment every year to repeat the cycle as opposed to actually having things paid for and done. Then the first location deteriorates and it becomes a long ponzi scheme of multiple supposedly successful locations as opposed to having changed lives in the community for the better. Of course in that list of $150,000 somehow paying the actors is still missing? Plus now that the TV show Shark Tank is out, so many investors will get the ideal they need to be percentage owner of all your stuff for money rather than just make back 20% per year.

With your long term build up of props and walls and systems, when you enter a deal it isn't like giving someone money that could equally be used for crack of booze or debts with who you are working with. A haunt is to some degree a liquid commodity but not to someone that isn't in the haunt industry. Plus it is very hard for anyone to tell exactly how much something costs. An artist can make things out of nothing. In the early years I did get the luxury of having over hearing conversations among people who should know better look at the haunt I set up totally impressed with all the money that must have been spent. Not really. Of course time is money only sort of unpaid. Plus buying things and aquiring knowledge people have already spent 25 years building cheap is a great help.

[Greg Chrise]

At charity level there are 40 people that might have an extra extension cord or drop light or a stereo system to get for free. The molds you make masks and props from never go to the haunt and are sort of your re pet wa. I think that's french or something. Strobe lights and fog machines are expendable expenses as are costumes and make up each year.

I also had a stroke of genius this morning or maybe it was just a stroke. A charity haunt I saw used 8 foot by 8 foot panels and doing it this way is actually cheaper than even mine by about $400 per 1000 SF. I have wondered about this for years why they would have done this and how heavy the walls are to manage. It came down to actual money and wanting to fill 20,000 SF. It worked. Fewer visible seems but, the need for help and industrial level storage handling. I can actually see how it would mean half as much installation time on site. Quicker in and Quicker out equals less labor, bigger impression factor.

If everyone is impressed with your stuff a good portion of the word of mouth is automatic. Set up, actors, organizers all get excited and spread the word as it is happening. How exciting this must be transfers to the media available for charity spots. If everyone is up beat, it isn't a chore or broadcasters wondering why they are being forced to cover some dog and pony show crap. They get into it. At least for a year or so. The second year just having more stuff built off season does the trick again, year three you have to think about actually paying for coverage even though it is a charity haunt. Leaking lots of photos may make up for advertising budget short falls.

As the thing is going on, you have so many participants both as actors and staff as well as customers that all do the social marketing for you as they are doing something completely different and cool. If in fact it can be made to be cool for them.

The fun part is talking to a $150,000 per year guy at about year 4 when they realize they haven't made any money but they are still cool with that. The end result is totally the same only one way is paid for. It's a life style.

[Greg Chrise]

Some 30 years ago I was living in a town that 3.5 million people all of a sudden became unemployed. It took 2 years for everyone to come to the realization that you would need to leave town if you wanted to eat. In those questionable days I thought my business might be falling behind and I attended a hotel meeting for the best small business career in America.

I arrived in my suit and sat down among 30 people seated and the program began after fillng out applications. It turned out to be selling hoover sweepers to your mother and grandma for $1850 a pop. Still the set up for this method of sales kind of stuck with me. You make a list of 3 people you are going to see and hard close on your amazing product 5 to 6 days a week until you see 20 people. From other sales jobs I have had I would imagine you would sell maybe one or two a week until you ran out of people you know. Of course by then a week later the guy is having another hotel seminar and weeding out another 30 people and the 30 a week later gets widdled down to only 3 people have actually made it to star status. The guy sold 3 high dollar vaccum cleaners and 27 people made no money at all.

My point is, everyone is fond of developing the wrong method of starting out, hearing what you should do from people that have never done anything themselves. You need a business plan, do you have one of those? You don't need one. You need a list of multiple potential sponsors, a list of multiple people that are going to do things that have skills, a list of where you can gather materials. All in multiples and not depending on any one source to come though for you.

Last week I told another $7500 ob I'm sorry I'm not coming. I spent 3 weeks fielding questions about how the job would technically be done and for a contractor and the city to figure out what is contained in their insurance requirements and every day for 3 weeks it cold be tomorrow the deposit check is in hand and we start. So meanwhile I'm paying more labor than usual to get little jobs done and out of the way to be tied up for 3 weeks doing the "big job" and my other list of 24 jobs is post poning until a month later or to the end of the year because I might not be available right now and some other thing they need to get done can get the money.

These days my lists of 20 places to go are anywhere from 2 days to 3 week jobs and the list also has drop outs or the timing is never quite right and some of them will not make it. Spending lots of time or money going to see some corporate operator who is on salary and dealing with someone esles money is going to drag way out for you to get any funding, a place or sponsorship. Smaller multiple deals will generally come through, so you scale back you overal offering to something a bit more realistic as opposed to it just didn't happen after negotating for a year and a half.

At some point someone has to pay for all of this planning and complaince time. The big deals might sound like something to be excited about but they never are because the person you are talking about generally does not have the check book. They have to go get something approved, the accounting department needs your w-9 for and insurance portfolio or they aren't mailing the check. And of course if it is a service they just disqualified themselves because it would take 3 weeks to a month to get paid as you invoices bounced from desk to desk with people scratching their heads not caring what you had to do to make all of this money to provide the service in the first place or decide if you had done what was expected.

You need multiple lists and if people do not react quickly they get left behind. Now there may be another list of such long term discussions but they don't deserve more than one hour a year discussing things that could happen.

I have a network also of nearly 20 companies finding me work and some might be good for one a year, others call everyother day with something. The whole game is to not become homeless or unemployed ever. Then as things develop there are also 20 things and services or events you can provide, there are 20 alternative ways to get money out of something or 20 ways to liquidate things that are costing you money to store. There are 20 different skills you have mastered. There can never be one thing that is going to make it for you, the one best opportunity in America.

I have contractors asking how I learned to do this and they will never know the real story. Was it the stock market? Being a pimp? How did you learn this? How about being self employed for the last 40 years. Now even older people are out in the real world going to have their own wonderful business and have no idea how the real world works as they have been shielded by some paying job. They have no idea how to do anything but are now a company. They can't get any work because it is obvios they don't know how to not weasel for a deal. It isn't like buying stuff at a flea market, it is respecting how hard people have to work to get what they have. If you are dealing with people saying business plan or quoting they have a budget, you are not talking to people that have actually done it not care to support you to do anything.

Believe it or not, I just saved you 5 years of your life if you can get someone to read this to you.

[Greg Chrise]

Another little phrase you should be cautious of is someone saying they HAD a business and know what it's all about. Really why do you not have that business anymore? Now they are employed by somone else and have a totally optoisitic view of how you can bust your ass rather than them.

Even if you have a mind to draw out a flow chart of what has to happen to make what you want to happen, throw on these many lists of 20 ways and 20 people and 20 people to count on, it is still a confusing mess even if you build a war room with all the crap up on the wall where you can see it. The experienced all know this and so pretty much ever little presentation that is lss than 5 pages is definitly going to be held suspect. It becomes more like did the applicant have enough energy to provide all this crap? Can they read and write? did they disclose anything out attorneys can grab ahold of when it fails? How do we make it fail and which attorney do we call for this sort of thing?

Just don't do it. Be completely realistic. Keep it all in your head and know what you want and can actually do. If you have the time to write how to haunt something for dummys, you are an author, you are not a haunted house owner. Or at least you aren't really the most successful or efficient you could be. You don't see many others giving advice in addition to mine because it hurts for them to pul it out of their heads and it is unpaid work to type it all out here.

My only consolation is that I know at least 3 people have made something happen based on what I have written on hauntworld over the last year. Or at least it lead them to their own kind of thinking and resources that made something happen. Some of the solutions to problems have been more unique than I had time to imagine and thus I learn from helping people.

[naberhoodhaunts]

well here is an update. the elks lodge rejected my proposal. said i needed to much time to set it up and take it down. worried they couldn't get there boats in the pavilion before bad weather and had two fund raisers for the lodge already planned for two days in the time i needed. but i purposed another plan and will see where that takes me. wish me luck