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  • Business people?

    Out of curiosity, who on here is not a hobbyist haunter, but someone who is very business orientated (either haunt owner or vendor), and what do you do to get that mindset??

    I know that's an odd question, but I have been a hobbyist and non-profit haunter for the LONGEST time, and am in college right now, and I would like to not be just a hobbyist, but a very business-wise owner and operator. I don't have a business degree, and I am primarily educated in the school of hard knocks when it comes to this, but I want to hear what you do! What works? What doesn't?

    I'm invested heavily in a new company to be vending at Transworld, which will be my full time career focus, and a stepping stone to something that I plan on making larger and growing with time.

  • #2
    I was in banking 21 years before I became a pro haunter (not sure which is scarier). Had been doing some small gigs over 20 years ago in addition to my "day job"...then became a home haunter and left banking for haunting full time in 2005.

    Perhaps a mentor? It's easy to assume you're thinking as a business professional....but what you don't know will absolutely eat your lunch. Business professionals use business coaches all the time. The concept is the same.

    Kathryn
    Kathryn DeSautell
    Lafitte's Landing, Dark Shadows Entertainment

    Comment


    • #3
      What I have learned from 7 years of running an online retail store....

      1. Customer Service is the most important aspect of what you will be doing. This is the supreme rule! Fall short here and you will fail quickly.

      2. Accept the fact that you will make many expensive mistakes.

      3. Make spreadsheets for everything. Especially if you are not a math wiz or business savvy.

      4. Establish your breakeven cost for every single product you are going to make. (This is critical: You must know what you are making)

      5. This is an extremely small industry. Screw over one person and everyone will know about it. See #1

      6. Learn to negotiate.

      7. Don't involve partners unless you absolutely have too.
      Lordgrimley.com for the very best items on the net.

      Comment


      • #4
        Don't think like a wantrepreneur, or do wantrepreneur things. That is a monumental waste of time, energy, and resources.

        Instead, spend that time learning the craft. That's vital. Work for pro-haunts that are actually turning a profit, and see how they actually do it. Turning a profit . . . and paying their cast, crew, and creditors, which is the only legitimate way to conduct business, be it paid staff, or if a volunteer staff, the requisite value is paid out to the worthy cause that was negotiated for in return for the volunteer help.

        C.

        Comment


        • #5
          You don't need to use spread sheet, pens and paper are just as good. What is fixed in your head is even better.

          I think alot of what I do every day was engrained from working for Boeing Aerospace for 8 years and a couple stupid things they had us do. Every day there is a report of what you did today, a log if you will even if no one reads it, this wil be how you know how much to bill for work completed or estimate any future work. You can do silly organizational things like draw out a flow chart of what has to be done and the steps that need to be completed, then go several steps further and see what can be done in parallel task wise. This is where you kind of overlap what people will be doing and making sure the resources aren't being waited on.

          Eventually you can do the flow chart thing in your head and this becomes "thinking on your feet". YOu might not have to go back and check what you wrote into your logs but can in a sticky situation but the act of doing things made you realize inefficiencies, how many times someone didn't do what they were asked to do or pretty much might not be capable or otherwise don't care.

          My present day logs are something I whip out every day and even write down every expense, that becomes the accounting. Still no spread sheets or computer data entry. No reliance on something that is going to crash and be a loss. On the other side of the scale, having what happened down, you always have a list going of what can happen of about 50 places to finish some task or provide some service that brings in money. Some percentage of those will never happen but you follow up on those lists of making money constantly until they do bring in money or fade away.

          Even though you decide you are some kind of independent entity, you aren't. The real network you have to create are not people hanging out in a bar sharing what ifs, you need to build a network of people who routinely call you and want to give you money. Preferably thousands of dollars instead of $5 hustles.

          Then it is a constant knowledge of what it costs you per day to have an organization and then matching whether the conversations you are having are going to pay for that or are coming from some other perspective. You can only afford to spend a small amount of time on things that are maybe a hobby or do not lead to a relationship that is going to earn you and your staff an income. You end up with matching who needs something and who can do something. This doesn't mean you should aspire to become a fat guy with an automatic dialer either. Many business people seem to think the "dispatcher" is who makes the money and it may take years but they always crash big time for that thinking. The gys who survive long term actually do things and can surround themselves with a crew on short notice or full time or actually make that amount of money by themselves.

          The opportunities of the world usually involve enjoying and being willing to regularly do things that other people think they should just have to call someone or don't want to actually do this thing that is work. The mechanics look more over time like you have taught yourself to actually do everything you are expecting others to do.

          And there is no routine. How it was done in the past and who you worked with constantly changes. So old school, institutional training and little lists of routines generally are something that hinders over all progress. The entire suposed failing of the present day economy is the falling apart of the last 50 years of everything should be the same, this is the way you do this, just because that is the way we have always done this. Of course it was inefficient and you also have to pay for some asshole with a clip board or a white board or a spread sheet and the modern world doesn't want to pay for crap like that. They only want to pay the guy who is going to get results without excuses. The market seeks this out.

          The advantage of being self employed is that at no time is there really going to be some one else has decided it is over. No one is cutting back, going to do things differently or decide it was a short term deal. The common person gets on a salary or paycheck and has no idea what it takes proportionally to get that check every Friday and lots of time they don't care. If that pay check goes away despite they did all the inefficient things they were told to do, they wander around looking for the next comforable situation where so much is provided for them. That system doesn't seem to work anymore or maybe it never worked and massive amounts of money are required to start things and eventually finding new funding isn't happening at the levels they need and they die. You actually have to be able to do something or provide some service or product. Never adopting any of these efficiencies means where you get the money from is an every changing landscape and how you do things is a constant self learning process.

          Instead of relying on people that can tell you how things were done 10 years ago, you learn first hand what you can do and how things work in the present and how they might work in the future. Sometimes the future takes decades to get here. Everyone wants a paycheck and everyone wants a service. So you become the bank. The cashflow instrument. As well as the person that can actually do this or that. Everyone think you get a bank involved when hell no that is who you are! You are the bank. You may have those places cash your checks for you but, you are the one matching where money comes from with how things are being completed. The bank isn't going to do that for you.

          You no longer hang out some place for 8 hours and then try to forget about your day when you can totally accomplish some paying task in 3 hours. Or if the market demands you spend 12 hour days accomplishing 4 times what people normally put out sticking to their routine that gets them a paycheck or keeps them in their comfort zone a little longer.

          There has to be something to make people call and want to give you money. You have the skills, the tools, the moves that accomplish things no one else has developed, are willing to do the work when others want to call someone or think about how to do something. The knowledge you develop, the insight you have internalized actually shapes markets and pretty much over time, the market is doing things your way and you just happen to have what they need to do the job. It is never this is what everyone else is doing. It is more like here is what everyone else is lacks about or improperly motivated to do. Or while everyone was filling out their daily planner and stamping forms, putting what they had for lunch on facebook, we completed this thing that costs X amount of dollars. Where is my money. Or rather "our" money.

          Generally all the things I bitch about, lets put together some kind of study or form a board of directors or get a clip board are little tell tale signs you are dealing with people aren't in efficient mode, don't care if anyone is making money or not or doing things that are at the expense of others. That is subtle but who is supporting this crap, who told them to do this crap and it would all work out for them, how long do they keep repeating stupid crap before they find themselves at a different place doing the same crap. Just rise above the crap.

          If there is something you lack in skill set, do it for a while. Do it different ways so you have something to compare different ways of doing things. Build other people to stretch their skill sets instead of just being some lug sitting around waiting for something. As others learn how to play the game eventually people are working FOR you as opposed to being someone you have to come up with a paycheck for. On the other side of the scale, marketing is nothing more than educating people what they should consider or could do. How to do it and why maybe it should be something they pay you and your organization for. You might talk to the same people for 5 years before they go ahead with something. It is generally never something that is magical and just because you did this someone bought it.

          Eventually no matter where people turn, your name comes up as the guy they should really be talking to. Because you demonstrated to so many that you can do something. It isn't because you put out coupons or drive around with a sign on your vehicle. People with real money and real issues find services that really match their needs eventually. Then they veer off and try to find the next best thing, then they come back again. Or you posture yourself in the position to serve all the people that have already been screwed over and have loyalty to some degree to begin with.

          And this concludes my time alotment for daily stupidity.
          Last edited by Greg Chrise; 11-28-2012, 10:08 AM.
          sigpic

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

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          • #6
            Greg, I don't think my life would be the same if you weren't in it lol.

            Thanks for the input guys, I'm slowly trying to work my way up to the level in which I can make this a full time profession, so I really look forward to continue hearing what people have to say around here. Everyone's input is extremely helpful!

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            • #7
              I read your question as how to transfer from doing something for fun, to how to actually make money and eventually be successful. I believe I can add value to this thread because of my history of owning successful businesses.

              When I was very young, I was given a $20 bill for Christmas. It was a brand new crisp bill, and the first one I had ever seen. Later that night I found myself SMELLING it. The next day, when my parents took me to target to buy a toy, I looked at all the things I could buy, so many things. Ultimately, I bought nothing. I sat in the back seat and pulled the 20 from its envelope, smelled it and got excited about all those things that I COULD'VE bought. I was hooked.

              I got an AM paper route at age 11. Age twelve I added the neighboring route, so I was at over two hundred houses a day. My favorite day of the month was collection day, where I got to count, and smell lol, all that money. That was soon not enough, so at age 14 I started buying BEANIE BABIES locally, and selling them on the internet. That went on for two years and I profited thousands; I even sold three to my principle while being disciplined in her office lol.

              I worked two jobs in high school, while pursuing a less "legal" business, selling goods with a very limited market. That venture paid for my massage college tho. So now I'm 30 and have been totally self employed for 8+years.

              All that is to say this... what made me an "entrepreneur" is an obsession with two things: money just for having it, and the game of making more money. The first rule of actually making money is simple: don't spend or borrow more than you will make.

              The trick is knowing your market; who will spend money on what you provide? What will they EXPECT? What will WOW them? Which WORDS will appeal to them? That last question I believe is the most important, because its what gets them to your office/website.

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              • #8
                Sorry my phone screwed up.

                So words... if your neck hurts every time you turn to the right, and somebody has convinced you to find a massage therapist, while browsing options in the phone book, which would you contact? "Absolutely Serenity Day Spa", "Relax and rejuvenate Massage", or "The Muscle Medics: The Pain Specialists." People think their wants and desires and needs are unique, so everybody wants a specialist ; you have to position yourself as one. If I need a product for my business, I am going to find a SPECIALIST for that particular thing. The best part about being a specialist... ppl expect to pay you more. I read once about an insurance agent in California who advertised as a motorcycle insurance specialist when nobody else was... his agency exploded in a year. This is one trick to make more than you spend.

                It seems to me like you are quite successful already tho Bobby, so I am a bit perplexed by your question?

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                • #9
                  OK I re read. The last thing you want is a biz degree; it will waste your time by giving you too much info that's not specific to your life. To be profitable, always know exactly how much you're spending, and exactly how much you're making. Its really that easy. You'll find tons of accounting software but its really not necessary. Figure out what you can and cannot write off, and keep your expense info handy for tax time. Total everything up and you're done. Have your accountant fill out the papers if you want an extra layer of "protection," I always do, if only to know for sure I didn't screw something up.

                  If you come up short, then two things happened: you spent too much, and you didn't make enough. Evaluate how you can do better on both sides, and implement.

                  Old business is more profitable than new business, so always do something to impress your current customers. Deliver early, or deliver more than expected. If you make a mistake on my product, you're expected to fix it for free... but you can IMPRESS me by sending me a free shipping label! Take the times that bad shit comes up for what they are, an opportunity to further solidify and impress an existing customer.

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                  • #10
                    Scotty, I really appreciate your input!

                    I want to know and ask because...well, anyone can be successful, but there's so many different levels of success that my definition of success can be COMPLETELY different than someone elses.

                    Eventually, I just want to make it to the top, learn and acquire more information, and get better at this, so in 20 years, if someone thinks "haunted attraction" my name is included in the list of the other people you already think of, like kirchner, mccurdy, armstrong, one day, I aspire to be at that level, and I know it will not happen overnight, or this coming haunt year, but each and every year, I want to work as hard as I can to be something, to learn from my failures as well as my successes. And most importantly, eventually be able to sustain myself, and my family, with something I care about so copiously.

                    Right now, I'm trying to find a balance of things to keep me with a steady income year round, DJ-ing is nice, but summer months I work like a dog, and come October/November and February/March, it's VERY slow. Haunting fills in October. Lifeguarding fills up my days during the summer. And I really do NOT want to lifeguard anymore, it's a HORRIBLE job (atleast in CT! lol), so I'd really like to find the right way to benefit from haunting year round! I am still young, mold-able, and very eager to learn, and I think that eventually, I can do something really good in this industry

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                    • #11
                      Bobby,
                      I make a living full time in the entertainment industry and serving the entertainment industry. I have four main sources of income. A monster museum at a Renniasance festival, Selling merchandise and services to Other haunted attractions, Working with and for a developing Haunted attraction that I do not own, and Owning and operating my own Haunted attraction.
                      Vending at Transworld will not sustain you alone. It might in ten years, but until then you will need other sources of income. You will not become a haunted house expert by DJing, you will not become a haunted house expert by doing anything other than working haunted houses. If you dont work haunts then you wont have the flow of ideas that a vending business needs to keep new products coming. I have ideas for haunt products every day, I have so many ideas I will never get to make them all. I think I am not special, I think the ideas come to me because I have worked in haunts so often. I spent the time in the trenches when I was very young and still do. It is not uncommon for me to volunteer at other haunts the nights that my show is not open.
                      I dont know how old you are, but get to work. The sooner you jump in the sooner you will learn to swim. At seventeen I had worked haunts seasonally for 7 years and was co-owner of my first haunt already. Then I moved from MD to FL to work as an actor year round at a haunt. I helped with set dressing and learned stilts and make up in order to be complete.
                      Success for me is being able to do what I love each day. I did not always make money doing it, I have lived in some crummy places but learned a ton along the way- Im still learning. I am successful now because Im willing to share what I have learned- I do a lot of free consultation, and in the past five years paid consultation as well. My path is not the only one to success, but it worked for me.
                      Focus on learning now and earning later. Earning should happen when you have learned enough. If haunting is what you want to do, then what do you need money for? If you have three kids then you need money- I made sure that did not happen to me so I could learn more. Relax and Haunt, not just in October when the haunts are open, but all year long. Teach yourself costuming, sound and lighting (yes you are a DJ that does not mean you know sound). You cn watch all the videos on a topic on youtube, but you need to do it to learn it. Can you wire outlets? can you figure out the amp draw of your fog machines and lights on a circuit? learn how to solve small haunt problems because that is what big haunt problems are based on.
                      I guess my advice is learn everything, then implement what you have learned. Im a bit random here but I hope you get the jist, it sounds like you are on the right track so far to me.
                      Allen H
                      www.Stiltbeaststudios.com
                      http://www.youtube.com/user/Stiltbea...s?feature=mhee

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                      • #12
                        For some reason that this season is for that and the other season is for something else doesn't work. For some stupid reason, where I'm located EVERYTHING happens in the spring and fall and in the winter everyone does nothing because it got below 50 degrees for a few hours a day and they do nothing in the summer because it gets around 100 degrees. Thanks to global warming we are still working this season on commercial swimming pools.

                        And even things like Allen suggested are sometimes not enough. I have intentionally not had children or a family to focus on having something. That and life is too crazy to put anyone else into this situation called life has been my excuse. And one of my half baked theories studying business has been easy to see, you drive around in Texas as our jobs run around a 200 mile area and read the business signs. Bob's Air Conditioning and Taxedermy. Air Conditioning and Gun Shop. Air Conditioning and Arts and Crafts supplies. Transmission repair and ATV head quarters.

                        So I try to imagine how this works. So everyone wants to do air conditioning and there are only so many air conditioners or people that have money to get their systems maintained and 20 air conditioning services, then even that is a seasonal business. They work most of the summer into the days and nights when it is 105 degrees and then there is 6 months where somehow hunting and fishing, their hobby tries to fill in the time. Pawn shop and Bait and tackle? Some of this is just screwed up. We can give you $15 for that microwave on a 400% loan payment and sell you a cup of worms.

                        A few years ago I went down a little rabbit hole of weirdness. I saw in California some guy made a bunch of bumper cars out of bicycles. I thought it was so cool I ran around and began buying bicycles for $5 and $20. One of them I took to a bike shop and spent $250 on it. More because it was an excuse to see what is in a bicycle shop and what do they do here, what do they have, how much do they charge. How do they run their business and how much money does it make? A comparison. So I see every bicycle shop has exactly 80 bicycles and ever big box store has 800 bicycles in stock. I'm actually counting inventory and making notes. Every bicycle shop has 4 of 5 people standing around to sell me a $4 set of hand grips and only one guy is actually trying to figure out how to get a chain on a bicycle. There are two times of year where it is perhaps really happening where everyone is doing something.

                        So outside, you see 4 trucks and vans and everyone has signs on their trucks that they are or have been their own bicycle company at one time, or still do work at home as well as at some shop. The way I imagine it works is East Texas not much is really done here but people go to the oil and gas fields in other parts of the country and make lots of money and the younger guys buy that $5500 super duper mountain bike whether that makes any sense or not. They spend more money having things customized whether that makes any sense, some reward for working long hours making good pay and perhaps risking death everyday or major injury and they have freinds that also have bikes and they will have the best and most high tech bike ever.

                        Then it comes down to financials. The store that built my bike did some amazing things and picked out some amazing parts and probably made $100 labor on that $250. They had actually been from my town and went through my haunted house and asked if I could make them a giant rock for their front window to sho off mountain bikes. Hell Yes I can make a whole mountain with bike racks that are kind of hidden in the structure and a neon red sign carved into the rock. I went home and drew it up so it could be taken into a few pieces and go through doors, be transported with just a pickup truck and even the two halves become a wall display if they got tired of it being in the front windows. You could be a total star and take it to trade shows and there you go. $1200. Mind you this store was near Dallas, not in my town so once every few weeks I would stop by. I was told everyone involved loved my design and was excited about it and they are just now working on financing the next wave of merchandise and are also going to be getting into excersize equipment. A month later they were out of business and lots of the inventory and racks were locked up in there by the landlord. Guess that loan didn't come through. For years there has been a for lease sign over their nice light up sign and logo and from the hiway you can still see a few racks and bicycle wheels poking out from all the construction crap the landlord is using it as storage working on other units and still not renting it out because he probably expects to someday collect because they signed a lease for 5 years and still have to pay the money wether they are actually using the place or not.

                        So how did this happen to these guys? Well, they originally had good jobs with some big shipping company and decided to quit. Their wives all had jobs and they did bike and work on things as a hobby for recreation. Except they really weren't good mechanics. I brough my creation home and in a matter of minutes finished 3 things they hadn't even figured out how they are supposed to be. Oh fuck here we go again, I'm a better naturally skilled mechanic than these guys, why don't I have a bicycle repair business?

                        So for $300 you can buy business plan software to become a bicycle retailer. You can join the American Bicycle Retail Group and they send a news letter of what is happening in the industry ever month! It's only $175 per year membership! For $350 you get a tote bag too! So of course I find all the info over time anyhow without paying money and discover there is a supposed formula, every successful bicycle store seems to be one guy and 4,000 SF show room and everything is supposed to look like jewelry and pretty much what is happening is they have to buy a truck load or more of bicycles and stock only what the distributors tell them should be in the store. And you get to go to conventions and share your bicycle stories and drink with other bicycle shop owners. Except the pictures show these are people I really don't feel compelled to hang out with. I'm not putting on any spandex suit with gel cushions in the crotch. It just isn't happening and my day job has me so worn out, yeah sure I'm taking 50 mile bicycle trips for fun. Nope not happening. I might go 1/3rd of a mile to the dollar store or ride my bicycle to buy cigarettes. Sure that makes sense.

                        So following this dream of having a bicycle store, even the successful ones if you follow the money there was an old dude that started it in the 70's and sold it to his kids or is also still in the if it makes a profit mode. The corporations are this guys daughter owns the company and the husband just works there like the main slave and she tells him what kind of vehicle he can drive around because they have a little kid now. Everyone there or in many of the stores has another job, a wife with a good job and accepts them for being a low life, is some doctors kid that they are trying to keep from sitting at home playing Xbox or they are older and the physical kind of dudes that are on military pensions and working for cash part time. No one is really living the dream here. And everyone of those shops costs $6,000 to $8,000 per month plus what ever everyone earns on straight commision. Not regular paychecks. Okay fine. SO that is in this town a $5,000 to an $8,000 per year income. Just enough to get to work and eat every day. That is all. And someone had to pay for the inventory either over time or entire families all got together and kept funding the thing.

                        So there are two stores making about $250,000 and it is pretty easy to see how they have to spend it to keep it going. If there was another bicycle shop it would hurt them and their complete family tree of decades of sacrifice. If you go find the warehouses of bicycle suppliers, they hand you a credit application. You can't just give them money? Oh no you have to qualify to be a sucker first and then they might load a trailer in Washington state and send it here and you have to do what they tell you. The sales rep will come by and inspect your show room and tell you what shouldn't be there distracting from selling whole bicycles and spandex pants with gel croutches. That doesnt sound like fun. Oh and you can't sell also on the internet, it has to be only from customers at your retail location. That sucks. Still somehow people have been convinced by this over all business success scam to be commited to doing this as a life style for years and years. It isn't because they are getting rich. Infact all kinds of other things are working against them. Every big box store has more higher end bikes now and literally 800 of them right there in stock, not have to order. So there are 5 other places that have as many bicycles as the entire town could possibly consume all in inventory, a whole years supply right there.

                        So I find internet bicycle dudes and even ebay stores I'm adding up every customer feed back and they are making $10,000 per week! Selling warehouses full of crap their father had stock piled in the 70's and then died. And to make that money they are posting something in 4 different locations from 7AM to 12PM every 15 minute. What kind of life is that? Or how many people are posting to make $15 on a 1970's original bananna seat. What is wrong with these people and when will they stroke out doing that? I can track and see they buy everyone else's ebay crap and it shows up a month later and every bike shop has a back room of crap the retailers said you had to stock.

                        Oh and to be a real bicycle mechanic there are only $6,000 worth of tools you should have or you can't take anything apart or build anything. So after years of studying and comparing, and stalking people enough to know their real deal and income and life style and demands of their life, I have about 60 used bikes here that will become decor and strange things for a clown haunt. Kind of what I started out to do after years of study. I saw other things I investigated. Searching on the internet was 12 times anything Halloween. Yet the actual money of the whole industry is about the same as haunted houses or one 1200 store locations of an autoparts chain. So there is a whole lot of people proclaiming to be a professional something and not a lot of real hard cold pay off.

                        Still people do things because they are good at something, have some skill and just want to eat everyday. I now have the entire trappings of an underground bicycle shop here and it amounts to making $130 a year maybe. Of course it doesn't matter because someday I'm just going to take my stack of rusty barbie bikes and do clown paint jobs on them and a stupid $5 bicycle combined with $2 in paint and a $2 inner tube becomes a prop that entertains 40,000 people over a few years.

                        Many of the older dudes I met early on in the haunt deals also made me question what their real incomes were or why they did this. Or we stood together wondering why something hyped up needed to be bought at all. It totally escaped us in it's function and now I know there are people that work other jobs and will buy that $2500 prop and pay $50,000 a year for a haunt location because they can and it makes them quite proud. The money might not have come from where it is supposed to, like ticket buying customers, so it is more like they are sponsoring very large parties for the community at large.

                        What really happens is just like Transmission repair and taxedermy. Even the most productive vendors hitting all the top show might make $10,000 and then they have a haunt and it is so upside down in funding that it is some kind of investment that is going to pay off some day and they make $10,000. The only ones that are making it make things out of crap and their places are paid for, no rent or mortgage and it took 15 years before people were trained to come there every year to be able to make $50,000 and half of that goes into building the next years crap and all the advertising is a full time job doing what ever type of marketing can be done with no or little money spent. Plain and simple. Who exactly do you want to be like. What are the moves, the tools, the rules. It is more like the stock market. You build up a bunch of crap and after many years it starts to look like something really neat them people with lots of money start doing it too. So while it is hot and everyone thinks it is so cool and things could really happen you sell them all your stuff.

                        And I have watched some guys build up locations and totally sell out half a dozen times in 20 years.

                        So when someone gets on here and uses words like business plan, mentor, internship....YOu are doing it wrong.
                        sigpic

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

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                        • #13
                          If you go back 30 or 50 years or even 100 years, there were no big box stores of conventions to go buy all of your things you needed to have a haunted house. Instead you sculpted things and had the molds and every few years cast what you needed to maintain your props. Even if the haunt burned down on the pier on the beach or the waves took it all away, the molds were inland in a safe location and you poured yourself a new haunt. Instead of buying a mask for $175 you figure out how to make it for $30 or less in actual materials. You get paid as customers buy a ticket.

                          And perhaps this is where haunting lost something. People like Allen are making tenticals on Utoob and that is really entertaining and funny and in a haunted house would be a big smile factor. Or you can just pay $600 for a tentacle from Tentacles are us and how much entertainment value does that end up having? Actually it has a hidden dislike factor. Even being the best looking tentacle this side of the Mississippi, it gives off a different vibe. Allens tentacle will be that creative bastard scared me with that moving thing. The pro tentacle is I can't believe they spent so much money on all of this. So how does that work? People stand in line and hand you $20 and you buy expensive toys or are you in the entertainment industry and scare people with a trash bag.

                          The whole bigger better marketing thing comes off like being a used car lot. The whole you too can be a haunted entrepeneur thing is so much mis information and nothing like what people that have actually succeeded done at all. People that did well didn't go fast an with big money unless they were taking over some existing business from an old dude that wanted out. Then they made it work. Otherwise they made things out of junk and people paid for half baked creativity as some kind of enthusiastic inspiration. What will they think of next as opposed to what will they buy next. It is subtle but can you see the different peception? Why do people go to a big box store and take a tour of the inventory but they will buy produce where the hand painted sign advertises Wallermellon.

                          Successful is actually at a more folksy level. Maybe the animtronic armagedon wars are doing okay but then why are those guys buying other kinds of businesses that aren't haunt related and aspire to have proffesions that are other than haunted houses. The grass is supposedly greener all the time somewhere else and really is some kind of front. A long cycle of how did you do. So eventually in the haunt market the young guys with shit loads of money from industrial employment and family support find out it only spent money and maybe for a decade it was a lot of fun. Then the older scroungers show up once again building crap out of nothing, building excitement and a whole new crop of very excited people wanting to quit their day jobs want to buy all your shit and run away with the circus.

                          The reality is like Allen has related. I have made sure I didn't have kids, lived in some really questionable places with no facilities to pull this off at times. Kept the burden of high rent and making payments on someone else's schedule out of the formula, actually learned all these things over time and am hands on making things instead of buying. You still buy some things but not lots of it. And not all of the yearly income comes from one event. It is more like there are always 5 things happening at one time. Something is always waiting for money, something esle is being designed on paper, something esle is being made, something esle is being sold and something esle is being done for someone that is paying for your services.

                          So Bobby, your reality might be taking DJing to the next level and become Deadmau5 and be a haunt operator and a haunt vendor and learn air conditioning and transmission repair and you will make it.
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                          Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

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                          • #14
                            The absolute reality is that everyone I have found to be freinds with long term that is successful one way or another has had to live without lots of things to have a successfull event. People living in haunts secretly with no money at times and having to figure out how to come up with money to eat. In the winter with no heat, sleeping in coffins. Or they took on some insurmountable all in gamble that luckily paid off. The ones that didn't make it alway site professional opportunities or health reasons rather than they lost the gamble.

                            I later ran into the bicycle shop guy that his place got locked up because that loan never came and he has already broken abot 4 other families with money and hopefulness and he just said the economy got him. He now at a rather older age lives with his mother again and works on bicycles out of the garage.

                            Same thing with some haunters, they are turning $200,000 every year and living at their parents home. The reality of listening to how everyone telling you how to grow a business with loans and obligations and somehow you are supposed to magically and every time do better than that and that is how you profit doesn't work. And the assholes wandering around telling you that if you don't profit you don't get to play anymore don't know how to make a profit so who are they to tell anyone what the pay off is? Maybe you do it because it IS your lifestyle. Perhaps all this talk of major profits and buying a nice car and a McMansion isn't how any of this works. Or you have to be a real dick and take advantage of people who want mentors and internships? You have to charge big bucks for consulting? And that is all you do? You don't actually do all the things you are telling people they should do? What's up with that?

                            So who are your real heros and what is their story? Their real story. It is tough in this day and age to find someone that does anything really. I want to know people that are the full deal. Make the things, sell the tickets, design the next thing. Dreaming about how business works doesn't really apply. Who says you need an attorney. Of course an attorney does. Who says you need an accountant and can't do it yourself. Of course an accountant. Who says you need a business degree? A business school. And so on. Over time you can do anything yourself and that is the big secret. Don't be baffled by bullshit and all the bewildering choices of all the things you are "supposed to do". Really? Who says and Why? If they aren't making you money you don't have to do it. It is something everyone else has been told and use as an excuse of why they can't do something. Oh shit I have no business plan. Oh shit I need a mentor and I need it right the fuck now! Yeah right.
                            Last edited by Greg Chrise; 11-30-2012, 06:20 AM.
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                            Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

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                            • #15
                              Everyone that works for me seems to have had a few good years as an employee somewhere making big bucks, or traveled the world as a celebrity with the tour making money for some production company. The the little couple year cycle of prosperity is over, they got used, are left with car payments they can't make, child support, living with their mother or being funded by their parents during these hard times. And there is no way any job, wether it is working for me or anywhere is going to make up for thousands and thousands of dollars of back log in any immediate time frame.

                              And if you try to get a job you are over qualified which is code for you have already been used up and spit out by the dream. So you can't trust anything. Some of us were shaken up really young with the trusting people thing and I think that is why there IS such a soul to all the haunt people. Nothing has to be a gamble really. It can be plain and simple. You make stuff, you get paid. Either you sell the stuff or display it for ticket buyers. If you sell stuff and sell it, you have to make another one to make money. If you show it as a tour, you get to keep the same one and sell just the viewing of it over and over for decades. Of course everything rots and rusts eventually. So you have to pace yourself because it is going to be a long on going do it over and over kind of thing so you better do what you really like doing. If you don't like it, don't do it.

                              And what is the worst that happens. You have to find some sketchy place and build it all over again. And it will take years to do it again. So you better like it. It better not have been someone else's business plan or prescribed method of risk. It has to be your own.
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                              Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

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