Beginner seeking advice from veteran haunters

[tchaunt]

@Midnight:
I already have Kelly's book. It gives a lot of information on the financial side of the business. What does the content of Tim's book talk about? If it's also financial stuff, I probably won't get it. But if it is like actually planning the floor-plan of a haunt, setting up a theme, etc., then I'll get it.

[JamBam]

Research

This thread is opening your eyes hopefully. There are many things you can do in the next several years. Research, business plan, build.

The internet is great. A young man like yourself can get tons of exposure and advice like this thread and site. Research also means going to the Haunts in your area. Any within an hour or two, which would include Bowling Green, Lexington, Louisville and all in between. Contact the owners before going and introduce yourself. They probably will give you tickets, advice, and access to their haunts. I know I would, and so would many of the others on this site. Pay for the rest. Experience as many as you can.

Other research would be into the area you live in. I did a few minutes of research about your little town and found a couple of things that would be of interest. Your town on wiki was described as follows:
The city was founded in 1817 and laid out by Andrew Campbell ... owned a gristmill, tavern, and began selling lots in Campbellsville in 1814. It became a county seat when Taylor County was separated from Green County in 1848, and the city agreed to sell the public square to the county for one dollar, so a courthouse could be built there. The first courthouse was burned by Confederates in 1864, with the replacement built on the same site. ...portion of the old courthouse still stands near the current (3rd) courthouse....Campbellsville became a regional center of industry in the 20th century....large Fruit of the Loom plant closed in 1998... remains home to an Amazon.com regional fulfillment center.

From that you could come up with a great story to base your haunt. Use what is there, check your local library, use creative bits to enhance what are gray areas.

That old mill could be a source of part of your storyline..... Talk to oldtimers (70's 80's and older) they will help. Maybe that old mill could be used in a bunch of years if you haven't moved to a bigger market.

Create a business plan and revisit it every few months to update it. This can be simple to start and include a budget of expenses and income estimates.

Stop limiting yourself to your parents garage. There is a picture of your town on wiki that I am attaching. There are many buildings in your town as most of America, that the owners do not use, been into, or have any plans to use, the second floor. That is where our haunt is as we do not have a sprinkler rule, just smoke alarms wired together. There was a new metal landing and stairway we had to add to get a second exit. We leave the haunt up all year long and originally just worked the couple of months prior to opening, but now we are up there year round. We pay a moderate rent that started with ten percent of the gate and is now a flat reasonable fee. Obviously if you don't open for three to five years, the option you want to try for is a set amount per year if free isn't avail. Your key points to the owner is that they are not using it anyway, but future rental by you is probable. Get an agreement in writing. The key here is that there are options there. Look for two exits, one at each end. Biggest initial investment will be a new electrical panel and circuits as you do NOT want to rely on the old existing wiring and the landlord may allow you to tap into his since it won't cost much. We do not heat or air condition this space. Fans are used occasionally.

You have a college in town, there will be customers, volunteers, and actors even if it is Baptist and conservative. 2,600 students will be a start for many things.

Paying $ 85,000 to HPI would be a solution, but build it yourself. Larry will understand. lol.

Your county has 23,731 residents. The counties directly surrounding yours, Green, Adair, Casey, Marion, Nelson, and Larue also have 11,641 + 17,650 + 16,326 + 18979, + 42,102 + 13,791 respectively adding up to 144,220 people within approx 20-35 miles from you. When you saturate your market and want to move to the bigger cities, you will be ready. http://www.census.gov/popest/countie...ST2007-01.html is a great source.

Building will be easier than you think. You can make many props with help from this site as well as Mark Butlers Monster list. (google it) There are many items that you can grab from rummage sales, cuty wide clean ups, and friends that think of you when they have stuff, all of which will be very inexpensive. You will amaze yourself with your talents and remember it is dark when it is viewed, so it doesn't have to be new or perfect.

Continue to develop your web stuff. Show your mother the myspace sites of many of the people on this site. Make a deal with her to only use it for the haunt and with her if need be. Give her the password and show it to her often, or ask her to sit with you and work it. Would be good quality time with her as well.

Good luck and remember to be patient,

[Greg Chrise]

A haunted underwear factory? The ghost of inspector 12 is still there. People have seen a skeleton roaming the grounds with her distinctive bee hive hair doo and reading glasses on a chain around her neck. She could be inspecting YOUR underwear! Beware.

[tchaunt]

@JamBam:
Thank you so much for that post. It was very good for me.
I didn't even know my town was on Wiki! I'm very glad you posted that little bit! I've already started getting a story formed in my head...and I'm not even trying to yet!
About the business plan, what would be the benefits of having one? I can think of a few like it will help me stay in a budget; with me being 13, I will appear serious about what I'm doing; I will have goals to achieve. Are there any other benefits? Also, are there any parts I should leave out do to me, by law, not being an adult?
Yet again, thanks for the post. It was very useful.
BTW, the picture you attached is under 20 ft. away from my soon-to-be treasure trove. A new courthouse is being built just a few feet behind where the photographer was. People in my town aren't very conservative; they will throw anything away. I was thinking the dumps from the site could be very useful to me for getting a few supplies.


@Greg Chrise:
O_o Um.......okay. That could be just a wee bit awkward. The ghost that plays with underwear. Can you imagine how many people would pay to have invisible hands stuck down their boxers? On second thought.............*shivers*

[Greg Chrise]

On these forums, so many have put out what is to be their business plan and it looks more like a things to do list or a shopping list than describe how you are going to make money, how many would you expect to come and so on.

The fundamentals are easy. Find junk. Fashion it into something. Charge people to see it. Store the junk. Repeat.

Once you get to the money part, collecting it, you can buy a few new items such as walls, lights, electric runs and masks or pay for a storage unit. Then you are out of money and continue to find more junk.

Supposedly a business plan will impress friends and neighbors and bankers. None of which will give you free money. What you offer as a show is kind of relative to what kind of junk you can find. With a little work this could be a boiler scene or this could be a jail cell window or this here could be an evil kid on a tricycle and so on. Sometimes you have to return junk as unusable for anything to the junk gods and say a prayer.

Eventually with out any more than knowing the tools the moves and the rules, no business plan, then you have so much junk that it is an impressive amount of work. Possibly even an asset or a resource I should hang onto, my pile of junk has been described as.

The business plan comes into play when you have money being invested by others as a guide for what practices will insure the return of their investment. It happens AFTER you have someone wanting to invest in you, for better or worse to make you go big time. It is not a tool to go solicit money. Just proving you have really thought this out means nothing.

In fact focusing on a business plan may prove to you that as far as you can reasonably guess it will all be for no real good what so ever and may be less than a minimum wage job. In reality it could be much much more than that and the only way to know it to do it. Then the business plan shows here is how things went over the last 5 years and this is the model of how it does work right here right now. If we got some money it would help is this exact way. It might help you out or even be an exercise that could be used as some school report at some point and give you good grades for showing your brain works and you have some ambition.

Even though you may live another 90 years, time and how you spend it is still very important. Do you later in life want to be known as resourceful, creative, clever and able to entertain which hauls in the cash because he has the skills or do you want to be known as some dweeb that spends all his time writting business plans?

It is just my personal opinion that keeping everything neatly in boxes qualifies you for a minimum wage or low paying salary that makes sure everyone is following the rules. It is counter productive to loking at something and not only envisioning what it could be but successfully making it into something near that vision. Putting things all into the right box takes away valuable time and we do need people with those skills but, making money is not what they do, those people cost money and charge fees to keep the T's crossed and the I's dotted.

Entertainment is setting your unicycle on fire and getting a hat filled with $20 in one dollar bills from total strangers. (*see disclaimer at bottom of this post*) The total plan there is make sure your pants are really soaked wet with water. If your wrote that down, you would realize I don't want my unicycle to get melted because it cost $125 and I don't like that wet pants feeling and it might be cold and windy. The result? you never made $20 and you have to go sharpen your pencil. How does that help the world? What would you write down? Get the fire marshal to inspect my pants? Make a video for Whacked out Sports? Or enter the $100,000 funniest home video competition? You could write it down but, somehow that might cost $20 to buy a video cartridge and mail it in, so you better wet your pants.

If you are only going to make $20 are you going to buy a $1200 insurance policy and write down all the contact info? Do you know what the fines could be if the police show up to stop your unlicensed public display of fire? How fast can you run carrying a unicycle with wet pants on?

The real love in haunting is the sketching, planning the scares and seeing what works, learning what works and what doesn't. All indicated by recieving $20 in admiration or not. Several years in a row. An increase in customers means they like it. A decrease in attendance means it sucks and you have to come up with something better. Even if you are always trying to make it better it may have to be WAY better. What do people not like? Was that in the business plan? Or did they really like what everyone thought was not very well done? You have to do it to know.

In fact, People love to see creativity, they love mispelled hand painted signs. It is funny and enjoyable. A business plan kind of logically would state you are getting signs from some pro graphics shop for $500 you don't yet have. If someone loaned you $500 you couldn't pay them pack because the sign is not entertaining and you will find it even harder to make $20.

People that are starting out with $100,000 that they don't want to lose and those developing a skill with no money start out with a different frame of mind and different limitations. The business plan angle is a job which may or may not be satisfying if what you wrote on paper checks and balances. One of the things on the business plan it to sell someone a book for $20. That hasn't really entertained anyone yet. It didn't realy have a big positive cash flow and it took a bunch of everyones time pontificating stuff. Someone somewhere had to do something they may or might not like to earn that $20. It could have been from making 20 people laugh for even a minute or to wonder what was up with that?

*Disclaimer #1: Do not set anything on fire or wet your pants and see if fire can burn you. Don't set anyone else on fire. These illustrations have been used as an example only to illustrate a point. Fire is bad. You have been warned.

*Disclaimer #2: My advice cost you only a minute of your time but, you could send $20 if you wanted to.

[Greg Chrise]

If you got the $500 sign right away, you would never know people really like signs that are kind of crudely made. Something hand made is worth $20. Something mass produced in good for the 99cent store.

I haven't read any of these books but, I'm sure it must say that in there somewhere.

[tchaunt]

@Greg:
Wow. That's a long post. But I managed to read it all. Basically, I don't need to worry about an imaginary business plan just yet is what I got from it. If I'm wrong, please correct me.
I do understand what you're saying and it makes 100% of sense. Thanks for the post.

[Jim Warfield]

You Might Have Just Upset Gregg.

He always aims higher than 100%, allows for drift, mosquitos per/square inch, pulls the trigger!

"Dam! 125% AGAIN!"

[robos99]

I do believe Greg's point was that a business plan is not so important...and Greg I agree with most of what you said, but I think at least doing the income/expense projections can be very beneficial. Even if you don't show them to anyone, it's good to see the big picture, and see where all your money is really going. When I was writing a business plan for a nightclub, as I got deeper into the income/expense projections I started to realize all the little things that will eat away at your profit. This theoretically could help you do better business. Of course, it's all a projection anyways and your actual results could vary drastically (hopefully to the positive side). But you might realize that you're not accounting for everything, or that you're not making as much as you thought, or that you just might not be able to pay yourself for a while. But there's no rule that says your actual results need to fit this. It's just a guess. And once you open, you could practically throw it away. It's like my approach to lighting design for bands....I start out with a very detailed plan of exactly what I'm going to do...and then at the start of the show I throw it all away.

The rest of the business plan is not really going to be of any benefit to you, unless you just want to show how focused you are. I'm not saying you won't EVER need a business plan, but for this stage, you'll probably be better off doing something else, which I think is the point Greg was making (correct me if I'm wrong Greg).

Tchaunt, PM me, if you want I can send those income/expense projections that I did for the nightclub. It won't really apply to this industry too well, but it'll give you a rough idea of all the various expenses.

[JamBam]

He who fails to plan, plans to fail - proverb

If you have been reading Larry's posts on other threads lately about the lack of business experience of vendors, you can relate this to haunts as well. If you don't care about money, keep it in your front yard. If you want to make it a fundraiser or income producer: PLAN.

The Jaycees have a simple business plan form they have used for years. Before a member can run a project, the plan is supposed to be presented to the Board of Directors for approval. This plan includes a mission statement, goals, budget of income and expenses, what ifs, counter measures, and review. A plan from previous years would help avoid pitfalls and problems encountered by previous attempts.

The Niles Scream Park in Niles, Michigan started out as a Jaycee project. Other types of projects around the country are the Greater Greensboro Open (PGA event), Greater Hartford Open (PGA event), Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, Texas.

I used one to apply for a loan to expand my tanning salon once. The banker was impressed, but unfortunately I didn't get the loan. Banks don't understand specialty businesses like tanning salons and haunted houses. I did learn that at least. My expansion was funded privately, paid off early, and exceeded my conservative estimates on the budget.

A fine year plan is also great to use to set goals. A yearly review will keep it dynamic.

[Greg Chrise]

I'm not saying not to have wish lists or things to do lists. Even notes on speculation. Respectfully Jam Bam's business plan training was a learning lesson with an organization that had a history and this tool forced him to understand spending and actions of the past.

Then taking this to a loan officer at a local bank it made no sense because loan officers are just someone's pal that needed a job, not a fully trained business genius. Perhaps if he was trained in business he would have gone to the back for a moment and laughed his ass off.

You are only reporting to yourself and what ever means it takes for you to feel you have covered the information is sufficient.

In running a real business you modify that little business plan in your head every day here and there. It it pointless to fashion one hard and cold in a 100 page document. Things change every day and you must think on your feet. What is the point of making an outline, forming a business plan, hoping to impress people with your dorkyness and then doing a project totally free style?

There are so many businesses operating these days that amounts to one person, a few helpers and a cell phone number. Just because it would be nice to have one, the ability to pay an office manager in today's income isn't gong to happen.

You are the doer, the manager, the foreman or baby sitter, the caterer, the contracts manager the accountant, the collector and the safety official. I would have to add that if you intend to make money with organizations by all means become profitient in business plans and get a business administrations degree with a masters in business law. Spending all the time achieving all of that should totally quell any ideas of having a stupid haunted house where idiots jump up and down with masks on among a bunch of black plywood.

You don't want to be beholding to any organization. You want to be a haunt owner that makes money. Do you really like school? Do you want to grow up and be a yes man or scratch your way to middle management or do you want your own business? Do you want to deal with cycles of unemployment and standing in lines or do you want to be your own boss. I wish I had from day one understood that difference and not lived the life my parents and grand parents thought would work. When it came right down to it, they didn't know and when trying their own businesses failed misserably.

At a young age I took over the family businesses and with no rules brought them back from millions in debt and old them. No business plan. I saved everyone's home from being auctioned off from the sherriffs and the IRS. Everythinghas a value and they didn't fail for lack of education or not having a plan, they failed because they weren't out doing things, they were all sitting around planning and hoping. They were sitting around chatting with attorneys trying to figure out what they could get away with and how to incorpoate instead of going and getting 1.5 million dollar contracts. I took way all of their dysfunctional behavior and the money came up. I took away their secretaries and brought in a computer station. No more spending 3 days on an hour and a half letter.

If there is an arguement or missunderstanding here, here is a link to business plan software. Can you fill in all the blanks? And frankly if you can fill in all the blanks who is going to read it after you purchase this software? Somebody you are going to impress and rip off?

http://www.bplans.com/retail_bicycle...summary_fc.cfm

[Greg Chrise]

The plan is simple: Do something, get the money.
If you have to bend the laws of physics or fill out a bunch of forms it is going to cost the customer a whole lot more.

That doing something might be an hour, a week, two weeks or a year. Then get the money. If you don't have the money there is no planning what to do with the money.

If you never get the money then you are making how to get out of debt plans or how to pay the rent plans. Or how to move all your stuff really fast and where plans.

That little section seems to be missing in this business plan software.

[Greg Chrise]

It's almost noon and the weather has cleared. I guess I will go to work now. What time did some one tell you to be at work?

[JamBam]

You must be a genius

So, planning is not good, huh?

The training came mostly from doing things, but with a plan approved by the organization whose money was being used. No forcing involved. We paid dues to get the chance to do it, too.

The banker did evaluate my plan, visit my business, go over my financials, and then prceeded to say that basically if I had money, he could lend me money. Will agree with you about bankers not knowing business, even the president of the bank won the street that I know personally. He is third generation owner/president and got it the old fashioned way, he inherited it.

Of course if one has the money, most people would think they wouldn't need to borrow money. Wrong! Those with money use other peoples money and keep their own $$ protected.

Now, to your business success Greg. You own your business because you also acquired it the old fashioned way, you inherited it! While the rosey picture you paint since your take over, it is hard to imagine that you did it with your own money. Nor that whoever you got money from to run the business did not demand something close to a plan of some kind.

Can you just imagine how much more successful your family's business would be if you had a real PLAN!

Got to go back to work. Being on both sides of the fence does give a great perspective with no narrow mindset.

[Jim Warfield]

Some bank employees are the kids of the bank owners. One loan officer looked pretty foolish when the farmer didn't pay the loan he got to put the crop in the ground, he went looking for the corn in a two car garage, the only building on the place.
500 acres of corn will not be fitting into a 2 car garage.
I guess the loan officer giving out farm loans didn't know corn.
They had probably not been properly introduced.