[0:19] Hello everyone. I'm jonathan crystal and this is haunt weekly a weekly podcast,
haunted attraction entertainment community, whether an actor owner, just playing official motto, we aim to be a podcast for you and we return to you with the luckiest episode ever. If three happens to be your lucky number.
Okay, Yes, because it's episode 3 33 Yes, 3, 3, 3.
[0:45] No, it's very much funnier when we hit 350, but yes indeed 333, we're gonna be asking ourselves nine questions,
that you need to ask yourself before you go pro and yeah, there's a lot of great questions here definitely before we get into things too deeply, take a minute, check us out at all of our locations,
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Um and also, you know, you can find us on apple podcast, google play stitcher, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast from, I pay someone else to handle distribution. We should be everywhere.
So anyways, yes, we're gonna be tackling nine questions to ask yourself before you go pro and.
[1:50] Okay, go ahead. You had something like this was inspired by a question we got you a private message from Jason briner and if you'll remember last week's question of the week, we asked you what questions do you have for us?
Yeah. And we got a lot of great responses and uh, Sam Farrell asked us about age limits for customers that is going to be a future episode.
Sam I can, I don't know when, but we will be doing it maybe next week, it may be four weeks from now. I don't know, it's going to depend upon what happens between A and B.
But we will be covering that's a great one and when we actually have a lot of useful things we can talk about on that, so that's gonna be good.
Um Chris Kay said if money were no object, what's your most wanted item?
That is a really good question. Um and it kind of ties into some of the others.
I don't know if that's a full episode, but I've been trying to think of an answer to that one ever since he asked it because there are definitely some cfx masks that I want.
[2:47] Um but honestly if money were no object,
one of the first things I'm sure we would do is probably get into pneumatic, so pneumatic props at least some I'd want a building, I don't think haunted house sell buildings.
I get your logic there.
This doesn't say anything about a vendor, It just says what would I want?
I want a building, like a building big enough to hold all of my future dreams, so this is like an imaginary place obviously.
Um And all the stuff we already have.
But barring that, yeah, I think mathematics would be on the list of things to do. Mathematics are expensive to get into.
[3:30] Um there's a lot of great props out there. And one of the things I do love about like Transworld and all the haunt trade shows is that you get to see how this art form is progressing and it is an art form.
A pneumatic props are huge art form and there's always been been steady progress.
I mean as someone who has been stuck using spirit animatronics before, some real ones would actually be very very nice.
Now one of the fears I would have is those products those props do break, they do wear out and they're very expensive and we don't have the knowledge to fix them if they break. Yeah.
So maybe we should also ahead in a pneumatic course in that well.
So I've been looking at the basic pneumatic type thing because I've been wanting to build something small,
that's weatherproof for the yard display just to add a little movement to it um for years and I just I've never found the time to do it.
[4:27] Yeah and it's tough and it's a big upfront expenses. Not only do you have the proper but you have the tank that, your air tank, tank compressor that you have to have, you have got all the equipment you have to buy just to have one prop once you get one prop in place.
Okay Pneumatic products are still expensive but you don't have to repeat that upfront cost.
Yeah or the upfront learning curve. Exactly.
It's one of those things where we just haven't been able to cross the bar for that up front cost both time.
Knowledge and money, Kevin Hopkins asked what's avoid you see in the market? What our vendors not supplying?
[5:02] That is a great question, and I mean, I mean that may be a full episode or something like that down the road, um, to give a quick answer, though.
[5:12] I think we are not want for masks for props.
[5:17] I think things targeted at home haunted house because a lot of the vendors focus on pro haunts and so the money is it makes sense.
It is, but I think there is a market for home haunted house for you know medium tier budget kind of people.
That's a really good answer because you just got me thinking about how,
there's this big gap between like spirit halloween slash home depot level and pro haunt there, those two things are a mild goddamn apart and there's nothing that slots neatly into that space.
Exactly, because I mean I would buy something if there was a store that was a mid tier store that I knew about that did relatively good quality like pro sumer level.
Yeah exactly. Like when we talk about like tools, power tools, Rio b comes up as the pro sumer level tool. A lot of people consider that Prosumer level.
I don't know I've never had any issue with Rio but we have a lot of Ryobi tools, I've never noticed anything wrong. Then again we're kind of pro sumer so maybe it is.
[6:20] But yeah, yeah we we definitely don't buy the cheapest tools.
Not anymore. Not since we we can't we have learned from our harbor freight errant ways.
Yes, yes it's yeah don't do that. I think harbor freight and spirit motors are made by the same people.
Well the harbor freight Chicago electric specifically because they do have tears at harbor freight now that are at least not horrible.
I'm not saying good um my answer to that was going to be that we have all this professional stuff.
[6:57] Um, what we are, I think lacking from haunt vendors is vendors that supply the more mundane stuff of running the business.
Um, we have a million places to get great silicon masks. We have a million places to get props, both static and pneumatic and animatronic, whatever.
And we have tons of places to get the tech stuff, your boo boxes, you know, any, any tech stuff you need, but there's a lot of mundane business stuff out there and.
[7:27] It doesn't have a dedicated vendor, like we have dedicated haunt weekly and that's good because we are a weird industry that has very specific and very strange insurance requirements,
but we also probably need like any business you would use in running a business could probably use a haunt specific one, like accounting.
Yeah, exactly, stuff like that or just like a business package just to package it all together and say if you are starting out, these are the things you need, you know?
Yeah, and that would be like like okay legalzoom, we need a Legalzoom for haunt weekly we need that because that'll help you.
I mean, yeah legalism will help you do a lot of business stuff, you gonna, you know, establish your LLC, you can,
do things like that, but there's so much more that goes into a haunt and there's a point where like Legalzoom just can't,
help you because you're just too weird of a business for them.
They have not actually been able to target that, they have no motivation to target that niche is what I'm saying, they're a big company that likes to target the protest over there. The Avengers basically they're a marvel movie.
We need our niche, you know, and I know that it's been tried before, but I think that having a temporary agency, uh services agency to find actors and recruit the talent, you need to build the haunt.
[8:54] Yeah, that's good too. I mean there's a lot of mundane, comparatively mundane stuff and running a business that haunts our unique enough,
and weird enough in that a a separate business that specializes in it makes sense, but that specialized business doesn't make sense, forcing you to either figure it out yourself,
good luck with that or go to a company that.
[9:16] Isn't really catering to that and and kind of taking a different direction.
So both of those I think that that would be my answer there.
And finally James thurman um who creates themselves the best animatronics on the market.
[9:32] I honestly don't I don't have an answer to this one because we haven't bought enough or heard enough about them.
Exactly. I mean I know that like scare factory is kind of persona non grata to a lot of hunters because of issues they've had.
I don't know if those issues are ongoing.
[9:48] Um and I know that fright props is deeply loved and honestly I love fried props to I have never, I've okay, we can't say we never bought anything that we have, we've never bought an animatronic or a big prop from there.
We bought a lot, but a decent amount of smaller stuff over the years.
Um you know, it's a good place once again to get some of that tech stuff.
We were discussing your boomboxes, anything that's raspberry pi based Kickstarter kids. Yeah, that we bought stuff like that but we've never bought like $5000 electric chair prop or whatever.
Yeah, so I've got to say that I did really enjoy getting that ad for an electric chair animatronic.
Yeah, I don't remember what was the story was like, it was something like yeah, but it was just the chair, it was literally just a fucking chair. Supply your own actor.
Yeah, it wasn't even an animatronic, it's like put an actor in this chair was and it'll work.
It was, it was a chair plus a speaker and maybe a strobe light and yeah, it was, it was ridiculous, hilarious. I'm like, wow, this electric chair, You know, animatronic crop is really cheap, it was like $200 or something.
I'm like fun, we can do that without even thinking twice what else it come with. Not the problem.
[11:02] Yeah, nothing. I've got fucking chairs, dude can pull a chair out of the fucking addict, that's easy.
Oh God, but who creates the best? I we're we're not qualified to answer that one, I put that one back out to the community um so if you all have a thought on that one, please do let us know haunt weekly dot com.
Haunt weekly on twitter, haunt weekly on facebook and youtube dot com slash haunt weekly You answer that one, we don't have the expertise, y'all take care of that,
um but we do have a question of the week for this week and I think it's an important one for the haunt industry to really be thinking about um what does success look like to you and your haunted house,
what is your definition of success? Is that money?
Not totally not an invalid thing if you're, if you're a business person and you're running your haunt to be a business, that's a fine fine end goal to have um but yeah, what does success look like to you for me.
[12:03] I think success looks like the smiles and laughter I see is people are leaving are hard.
Yeah, that's what success looks like to me. Yeah, I think the generational fan base that we've built up,
like just the really loyal people come back year after year and then eventually bring their kids this phenomenal to me.
Yeah, that, that blows my mind that we have people taking their kids to the hall and I was like, yeah, I came here as a teenager,
and loved it and now my little little kid is old enough, you know, he, he or she is like, you know, at least of walking age and they're coming to the home because they want to, they, they loved it that much.
They're sharing it with their kids. They wanted to make sure their kids got the experience and that's just Crazy, as funny to me, it makes me feel way older than it probably should, to be honest with you.
Because like most of these people, most of the visitors that are doing that came as teens, so it's perfectly reasonable.
15 years later, they would have kids of their own. It's not it's not crazy.
It's not like it came through when they were one and now we have kids, it's not that they came as teens, so mathematically, it all tracks, but jesus, every time someone tells me that it's like, don't do that, I feel the stepmother now I'm going to die.
But no, it is amazing. I do think the smiles, the laughter that we see as people leave, the haunt that is.
[13:28] Every time I think about giving up or not doing it again, that is what I pop into my brain to remind me why we do this.
Yeah, and you can answer this question on a personal note, if you don't know haunt weekly and if you're if you're an actor, what does success look like to you? What is a good, what's the sign of a good scare?
Is you know, making someone pee themselves code yellowing or is it just a great reaction or is it when people are responding to your character in a certain way?
So it can be for literally anyone in the haunt industry, what does success look like to you when you're haunting?
I think it's a great question, I'm gonna be very excited to answer that question, haunt weekly dot com.
Haunt weekly twitter, haunt weekly on facebook, you know the drill by now leave a comment, we will see it and probably included in the next episode, We're very likely including next episode.
[14:19] So that brings us to the crux of this week's episode nine questions to ask yourself mostly before going pro, we did a whole episode about why we don't go pro,
and I think that was an important episode for us to do because even though I have great admiration um,
for pro haunted house we asked ourselves these questions and basically came up with the answer of,
that's not for us.
[14:57] You know what I mean? We we episode 93 episode 93 way back, hell, that was 200 plus episodes ago.
Yeah, we never did the follow up while we might go pro because I think that would've been a much shorter episode Yeah, oh man, but but yeah, seriously,
in a way this is kind of the follow up to that oddly enough, because we're examining the questions,
that made us make that decision not to,
and they may make help you make that decision not to, or very possibly they will help you make the decision to go pro.
So these are nine questions, I think they're all extremely important to ask and to think about before you make any decision about jumping, especially if you're making the leap from home haunt approach, haunt weekly,
even, but you can also do many of these questions if you're thinking about doing your first Home Haunt or yard display or big halloween thing this year.
So first question crystal okay, what is your why, why do you want to do this? Why do you want to go pro?
Um is it just because you love haunting so much?
Have you been in the industry some and this is just your passion and what does it look like if you decide.
[16:19] That this is gonna be your job now, this is what your livelihood depends on and that's a rough transition for a lot of people to make.
[16:29] You know, it's amazing how much you can enjoy something when it is a hobby, when it is an advocation.
And it's not, it's something you are making the conscious choice to spend time on and know that you can walk away at any moment from um if you make it a business you're taking away that right?
So the and and like I said the asking why you're doing this is important if you're going to do a home haunt to why are you doing this, why are you going to outlay a not insignificant amount of money,
and time into something that will never recoup either. Yeah.
[17:08] I mean, God knows, we have spent so many thousands of dollars on running our haunt and never come anywhere near recouping even the base costs and never expected to,
you know, we do it because we enjoy doing it and ry for what we do is basically that we love it.
Yeah. And we just covered it, you know. Yeah. It's to provide memories for people and it's a creative outlet. I mean, it's got a lot going for it for us.
Yeah. It's creative outlet. We get to see the smiles we put on faces and it's basically how we give back to the neighborhood and a big part of it because,
I mean we're not super involved people in other aspects and Ellie Ellie Ellie.
Ellie is crazy like that, but we're not um and the result of that is that this is how we have the most famous address in algiers Louisiana right now.
Certainly the most famous home address.
[18:09] I mean we're not difficult people to find.
[18:13] You can't docks us. It's all out there already basically because of the haunt, you can't docks what is already public just saying.
But no, it's it's a lot. Yeah, we know why we do it. But when we ask ourselves this question, this was why we decided not to go pro basically this whole thing of why why did we want to go pro because we wanted to do this more.
But then we stopped and thought about all of the obligations we have, how this goes from being something that's purely for fun into something that's a business and has to be run like one if it's going to succeed.
[18:49] And you know, we don't have the resources to quit our day jobs to do this full time.
And that's basically what it and we're not young anymore. We can't do 40 hours a week at a day job and you know another 40-60 hours a week building a new haunt weekly just we don't have those.
We don't have, we don't have the mental physical or financial. Financial.
Well if we keep the day jobs, we might have the financial, but but we don't have the other kind of capital we need.
[19:24] We might have the money side of if we keep our day jobs.
But that's frustrating because yeah, we do want to do this more and we would like to make it a bigger part of our lives.
But we don't run a haunted house to get fire permits.
No, exactly. We don't run a haunted house to make lease payments or rent payments and deal with all the headache that comes with doing business in the city.
And new Orleans is not the most difficult city to do business in. No.
Um I I know this pretty well. It's pretty difficult to hold events in though.
Yeah, haunted house is fall under a lot of times. Well yeah, because the whole city is a mess with with anything that is not one of three types of business if you're wanting to launch a bar, a restaurant.
[20:13] Or retail or a retail store.
New Orleans is easy. It's really truly easy, like it's from like even the bar thing, it's silly easy.
The hard part with getting a bar going and as we found out from some friends we have is not new Orleans, it's the fucking state and and their handling of liquor life because state handles liquor licenses.
[20:38] That is the problem there. But still if you're running one of those three types of businesses, new Orleans will stand and deliver for you pretty quickly. It's all super easy.
Um If you don't want to run one of those three types of businesses, the city doesn't know how to deal with you.
And I think that's true of a lot of places to, I don't think that's just a new Orleans thing anyways, but no, why do you want to do this?
Why are you doing this? And can that why be better met through a home haunt or through something else? It's the first question to ask yourself 2nd question, do you have experience?
And this once again, this entails everything.
If you are doing, thinking about doing your first home haunt or yard haunt or something like that.
Ask yourself what experience do you have that can help you? And if you don't have a lot, maybe start really small focus on doing just a couple of things and getting those really well and then expanding over the next few years.
Yeah. And if you do have experience, have you made those business connections that you need to make this successful because business is a lot about networking.
Like I didn't get that in college, They didn't say you're going to have to network in order to do whatever it is you're wanting to do.
But it's true, I mean if you don't have the networks in place to like find actors, find the best deals on whatever animatronic you're looking for or things like that,
then you're not going to, you're going to have a rough time of it.
[22:07] Just put it there. You definitely um if you have no or limited experience, the best advice I can give anyone in this situation is one start small, do not get ambitious out of the gate.
I understand that you're excited about this idea so you want to build the giant, you know, home haunt, take up the whole yard and driveway and if you're independently wealthy go for it, you know, whatever and you may be able to pull it off.
But if you want to enjoy it, start small, learn as you go expand as you learn and it doesn't take that long.
Like we went from doing a porch thing to using the whole haunt garage to having most of the driveway now queue line That all happened in the span of like 5-8 years.
[22:57] Yeah, Yeah. And you know there's a reason that most businesses either succeed or fail within five years because that is the learning growing period for any new adventure.
So what experience do you have? What connections do you have think about it?
Just kind of figure out what you have and how you can apply the third one.
Okay, what is your unique selling point? We have talked about this several. Yes.
You know, is it the idea behind your haunt that's going to make you you, is it the theme of specific scare giant animatronics? I mean what is it that you want people to know you for and figure this out before you start?
You know, your USP, you're basically answering the question why would anyone go to your haunt this?
Another haunting the area or in some cases any haunt in the country?
What makes your haunt stand out? Why should customers go to you specifically?
And once again, if you are a home haunt her, this still applies to you.
What makes your home unique? There are probably other home haunts in your area, what do you do that's special and unique.
[24:11] And you need to think about that because that's where you want to put your focus in terms of when you're doing that bill, when you're putting in that work.
[24:20] Centering everything around your unique selling point is an important thing to do because it's what everything's gonna hinge around when it comes to, why people choose you over.
Haunted house or activity why? Yeah, it goes directly into your branding which was episode 83.
[24:39] Yeah you need to think about this before you have put the first screw into a panel before you've built the first prop or bought the first prop, you need to be thinking about this because that unique selling point is going to determine where your resources go,
and that resource could be time, it could be money, it could be energy but you're going to direct the lion's share of your resources to that unique selling point.
And I think that's a really important thing that a lot of haunts forget I mean if you're the 13th gate or something like that you can have a unique selling point.
But yeah we have these movie movie quality sets if you're the headless horseman um you can have you know we're the kick as trail haunt weekly giant statues.
You can have these things haunted house sorry as headless horseman haunted house we were talking about headless horseman last night, that's how I got fell into that trap.
But yeah but I mean haunted house has the giant thing, it is overloaded with haunted stuff.
Yeah. You know what their unique selling point is 11 thing leaps to mind and it's in the marketing to Yeah, but you think about it one thing leaps to mind immediately. What's that for your haunt?
That's a very important thing. Number four once again a good question regardless if you're going pro.
[25:55] Um or going for or starting your home haunt your budget,
how much money do you really have here and this is a tough one to be honest about. Yeah.
Yeah you have to have a real conversation with yourself about this because I mean it's hard to estimate what you don't know because you haven't done this before, you know that puts in a layer.
[26:24] Yeah, figuring out your budget is probably the single most difficult task before launching any kind of haunt.
And that's true for home haunts pro haunts and anything because like you said if you've never done it before, you don't really know what you're walking into and like right now lumber costs are still wonky.
What is you know how much lumber can you really afford? That's a tough question.
I mean for pro haunts with lots of money, the lumber situation has not been that big of a deal, but for home hunters and for people with very small budgets,
doubling your material cost, which is functionally what's going on still.
[27:08] Leads to real problems because if your budget for your homeowners say $2,000, which would be a good budget for a decent sized home on actually you can do a lot with that.
[27:18] You could, you know once upon a time but now it seems like with lumber prices they're coming down but they seem to be coming down slowly,
you know, which is bad news for us because we might be looking at some lumber and the not too distant future. So Yeah.
Yeah, so I mean like you there are so many little things that cost that you have to take into account, you know, it's not just the big things um,
and and some of that includes things that we'll get to in a minute but,
but I mean and if you're doing a pro haunt, you need to be thinking about paying for less than fun things.
You need to be thinking about how you're gonna pay your staff, how you're gonna pay for all those building permits, you're going to need fire inspections and all that.
Um at some point you're likely going to run into a point where you need to gain or bring in outside funding,
because a pro haunt in particular is a very expensive operation,
even, I mean there are ways you can reduce those costs and like if you wanted to reduce it in new Orleans, one of the first things I would tell you is open it somewhere down the river.
[28:34] Yeah because you can get land cheaper buildings cheaper, you can get everything cheaper there. They'll cut your call significantly.
Now that's difficult because you're going to struggle to get new orleanians and city folk to go to the country. So you're also limiting your market especially when there's you know a haunted house within public transportation distance.
Yeah. I mean I can take the streetcar why not from my house because we're across the river but okay, I can take the ferry to a streetcar and be at the mortuary totally via public transit or just the bus.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can get to the mortuary by public transit or walking or biking if you're living in the city.
Um I can't do that with rise, you can't do that with 1330 for living in the world feeling Baton Rouge so I I don't know enough about baton rouge public transit to be honest with you to tell you what you can or can't do there.
Yeah, technically you can bike to um.
[29:30] Louisiana Nightmare? Is that new Orleans? Nightmare?
New Orleans Nightmare. Thank you. I'm like Louisiana nightmare? No, that's wrong that we had a bit of a night long time ago?
We're all a little dumb brain I spent on my brain's doing work today, I'm out of brains.
[29:48] Um but yeah, you need to be thinking about that because there's a million different little expenses that are gonna come up and no matter and here's the thing,
no matter how well you plan, no matter how much advice you get,
I mean, and this is a good time to consider paying for that consultant to tell you about to warn you about as many landmines as possible because that's kind of what a consultant would do in this stage is tell you these are the pitfalls, these are the landmines don't step on and be aware of.
[30:19] And and if you don't, aren't using a consultant for your startup, then you have to plan for when you go over budget because it's going to happen, something's going to come up.
That is completely unexpected, that you didn't know about.
Um have you built it into your budget, where there's that, you know, excess.
I know that we've talked about that on an episode. I can't remember which one, but well, one of the challenges you face is you kind of have to ask this question twice you go, what's my budget?
Okay, well this is the budget, this is what things, right? And then there's no, no, no. What's your real budget?
What's the actual amount you can drop on this because you're going to go over budget? Almost guaranteed.
So what's the real ceiling, what's the real budget?
Yeah, yeah. You need to think about that number five. crystal Do you have a location?
Is the location near enough people like we um we've talked about this several times about where we would want to hunt and how many people it would need to be needed,
like because you're going to have.
[31:31] We we roughly estimated about 100,000 people we'd want to be near that many people with easy access to where we were going to set up whenever we were talking about going.
Easy access does not just mean practical, easy access.
It means emotional like energy wise and it's like I think Algiers has easy access to the city because we do realistically we do you make that commute every morning to go across the river and go to work.
It's not any longer to come to Algiers than it is.
Pretty much go to your work from anywhere else in the city.
Yeah. Or just to get across, you know, one edge of the city to like the the the outside of the quarter.
You know, it's the same amount of time you were in Lakeview and trying to get to the quarter for example, it would be about the same amount of time. Yeah.
[32:24] Um but it's but so many people because you have to cross water to get to algiers, that's a mental expense on them.
But they don't live over here. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, do you have a location? Are there enough people nearby? You said 100,000?
That's a good starting point. Yeah. Um Do you have ample and easy parking, jesus christ this one?
So many people like so many places that whenever we were thinking of going pro we just didn't immediately. Yeah exactly because there was no parking and and parking because new Orleans is a historic city. I know big shock right?
We're a historic city and one of the things that kind of comes with new Orleans being a historic city is it was not built for cars.
Yeah. Now here's the thing that if you were to set up in a tourist or like business center where people are used to walking around then you might not need the parking.
Yeah because people are used to having to walk there and we actually did the whole episode on parking.
It's a great episode and I think it's one of the things everybody overlooks when choosing a location because 53 episode, 53 crystals got the list here.
So every time I'm like yeah we did an episode and they used to listen to that she's going to chime in with the episode which is good. It's good. I'm glad someone can do that.
[33:48] But yeah we did the whole thing about parking cause this is something that is tremendously overlooked,
when choosing a haunt location and it's absolutely nuts to me that like, and there have been some very successful hunts and there are some very successful haunts where the parking situation sucks.
Hell's gate parking situation sucks. You have to park so far away, there's a shuttle bus To take you to hell's gate.
Um 13th gate locally, terrible parking situation.
We literally park semi illegally every time we go to 13th gate because we parked in the casino lot and then just don't go to the casino.
[34:28] No one's ever said anything. There's a big, it's a huge garage even when 13th gate is open, no one's in it.
Um Yeah, we park in the casino parking garage um for free And walked to the 13th gate and I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to do that, but I also know that like we've been doing it for 15 plus years now and no one says shit.
So you can't, you gotta actually tut tut us if you want us to change our behavior.
So is location A. D. A. Compliant already? Or do you have to do work to get it there?
[35:02] You know? And apparently we're going to have some background noise. Sorry, I don't know what the hell that is that's um doing long long stuff next for you.
But yeah A. D. A. Compliance is a big big deal. Uh Mostly because retrofitting something that's not A D. A compliant for 88 compliance is a nightmare.
Yeah, it's a huge nightmare. Yes.
We're actually dealing with this on campus right now because my building that I'm in is not 88 compliance.
It was it was built before. Like people thought about like not people that we're not we're differently abled will say, but people in wheelchairs were not considered in the design of this building at all. No, not at all.
You know, there are stairs, there's no elevator, there's there's bathrooms where you have to take stairs to go to the bathroom.
Yeah, exactly. I'm on the second floor. I have to go downstairs and all the way the other end of the building every time I need to.
[36:00] Yeah. It's not fun. Yeah. So this building was like not designed For the 88. So what they're doing is they're actually gonna move her department and then the other departments in the building out to a different building that is a. D. A compliant.
There was a newer building and they're basically gonna move the campus police. I understand it to the first floor.
We have no idea, everything is still in flux. We just know they're moving, there are moving is happening but they're gonna basically only use the bottom floor because the building is completely a. D. A Compliant if you only use one floor.
[36:32] Exactly and waste the other two floors one, it's only a two story.
It was, it was supposed to be a temporary building during the war.
Oh, you ever notice how temporary solutions become permanent solutions real fucking fast?
[36:48] That's one of those things right? Also and related to this, have you spoken with your local fire marshal about any renovations you need for fire code compliance?
This is tricky because and we're gonna talk more about the fire marshal stuff in a second.
Um but basically a lot of build the requirements for haunted attraction are different than requirements for like a retail space or for, you know, like a restaurant or whatever.
And one of the things you run into is like we are required to have sprinklers, not every space is required to have sprinklers, Especially if they were built some time ago before those standards were really common.
And you run into this problem, a lot of New Orleans or seemingly modern buildings were built actually in the 60s or 50s even and therefore they don't have the latest greatest fire protection systems in there.
So that's something gonna run you can run into and guess what, just like retrofitting for a D. A compliance.
Retrofitting for fire code compliance is a nightmare to many, many human monies will be expended.
Yeah, well there was that um one haunt that we reported on that had talked to their fire marshal,
got approval for their plan, then bought the place and then we're told no, that won't work.
[38:11] You know that that's not gonna work for you too. You have to have a bigger water tower that you're putting because they were in like a field or something.
So yeah, fire suppression, making sure all those eyes and teas are Yeah, and, and, and bear in mind we did the episode about the Six Flags fire, the haunted castle fire.
Um That incident is what really sets the tone here for hunters unfortunately, because every, because basically if the teal teal teal d listen long didn't listen of that teal deal, that sounds weird.
But anyways of that episode is basically the fire marshal's got blamed for everything and to be fair, they were fuckinup to be fair, but they did fuckinup and they really did deserve the blame.
But now every fire marshal everywhere in this country is scared the ship of that happening to them.
Yeah, that the people will die in a haunted attraction fire and they'll be the ones that the blame falls on two.
Yeah, and like, I'm sure there are going to be new safety codes after the story that we reported on last week about the kid falling out of the tower.
Oh yeah, yeah, the drop tower, Yeah, I'm positive there's gonna be new and that of course is going to impact amusement parks more than haunts, but I guaran goddamn tee you some of that backlash will hit dark rides and other haunted attraction.
[39:35] Guaran goddamn tee that's gonna come around, you're gonna and that's why we reported on it is for that exact reason, It's like yeah, it may not be direct, But you're gonna hear about this again.
I'm very sure, very confident in that. No six.
Moving on because we've got four more questions and not a lot of time.
Um How will you track purchases for the haunt? And do you know what vendors you want to use for the things you can't make?
This is a big one and one we're terrible at.
We do not track our expenditures for the haunt worth as ship. We're going to try to get better about it this year.
We haven't made any expenses expenditures yet. We're going to try to get better but we have not done that. And so we have to get estimate.
So so here's the thing whenever I find a new hobby that eventually.
[40:30] Turns into a business and there's only been one that I started out um thinking of it as going to be a business Whenever I 1st started.
[40:42] Um I wish I attract my expenses from the beginning, the very first purchase of anything because it made taxes so much harder.
And if you've got merchandise and stuff, you need account of all of your inventory.
[40:59] Like inventory. If you sell actual goods, taxes are so much worse.
[41:07] As a sole proprietor in a consulting business at least I don't have to worry about fucking inventory.
Yeah I did with the with the headdress stuff it's rough it really is.
So how are you going to keep track of all this If you and this is true. Once again home haunt or haunt, you need to know where the money's going because of his pro haunted house Way more important admittedly.
But even as a home haunt to make sure that you're not going wildly over budget or that you're not spending money in stupid ways.
Because the thing about it is this it doesn't matter if it's pro haunt or a home haunt if you spend too much money and it becomes untenable.
You close. It doesn't matter if it's a business or not.
The same thing that kills most pro haunts. Not being able to make money because they spend too much money. Usually the cost overran the money they brought in.
[41:57] Um The same thing can happen to a home haunt. They spent so much money that their discretionary funds couldn't absorb the blow and now they're taking food out of their mouths to do this haunt.
Yeah and you know I know that I used to um use shoe boxed.
[42:14] Um I think there's there's still around and still have a free program but I don't know about you but they're still around.
Yeah you just take photos of the receipts and it saves it all for you.
And there are some things like um Square if you use square or clover um for your processing out for whenever you take payments. Because you need to be thinking about that too.
You know the other side of this. So when you take payments um it'll track some of that inventory stuff for you.
Exactly. So be thinking about how you're going to track stuff once again home or pro in this case. I think it's just gonna read that title is one of the questions to ask before starting a haunt.
And because I'm realizing everything works for both.
I didn't think about it that way when we were writing the notes um number seven, who will build your website and I would attack on social media presence. Yeah.
Like who's handling all that for you? Who's handling the digital ship?
Yeah. Are you doing that yourself? If so Great.
But here's the thing and I see this all the time in my day job. One of the things I do is I do copyright enforcement For a financial services client, medium sized one.
[43:27] And basically what happens is that it's a field. And I'm trying not to give away too much of the plot here.
But it's a field where anybody can enter it.
Like you take a couple of correspondence courses, you can probably do a decent job in this field. It's not like being a full account where you have to have certain certifications.
It's not like that. You can actually get into this with a correspondence course and it is an important financial service to. I'll add that you can get into this with very limited startup and just a little bit of time to learn how to do it.
[43:58] What happens is basically these pitchman will say, hey, all you need to do is take my course, learn how to do this and set up a website and break in the monies,
and the whole set up a website thing is doing some heavy fucking lifting in that.
It is not as easy as they make it out to be when they're trying to get your money for their correspondence course on this particular service.
Um it is not that simple and the result of that um is a lot of people take them spend the money on the course, spend the time learning how to do it and maybe even become pretty good at it honestly.
But then when they have to set up a website, they copy and paste all of my clients content, images, text and everything.
Sometimes just, I'll just copy, there's because they have no idea how to set up and fill the website or social media presence and the result of that is I end up shutting the business down literally.
[44:53] I thank them. Yeah, every, every two weeks, every two weeks we do, we look for people who have stolen the marketing and every two weeks we find them and that's been going on for like 10 fucking years or more than that. Probably close to 12 years. Yeah, exactly.
And so yeah, if you do not have the skills to build and maintain and fill a website and filling is an important thing that you've got to have images and text, you've got to fill that ship.
Um if you do not have those skills, who the fucky are just doing it for you.
Figure that out before you start. And are they just copying it from somewhere else?
Figure that sh it out early. Figure it out quick and make it work Alright. Number eight.
[45:37] How will you market your first year? What is going to be your marketing strategy?
Um Yeah, this is an important one because no two haunts are going to have the same marketing strategy because no two haunts in the same position and you're not gonna have the same marketing strategy year after year after year.
So it's very important to sit down and figure out what that first year is going to look like from a marketing standpoint.
How are you going to announce yourself to the world?
[46:05] Yeah, because you can't rely on word of mouth because you hadn't been around, nobody knows who you are.
Yeah, you can lean more into word of mouth your 2nd, 3rd and 4th and subsequent years, but you can't rely on it in your first. So what's that? What's the approach going to be? Are you gonna do local media?
Are you gonna do Guerilla marketing? Are you going to focus on like flyers and events and things like that? What's the plan?
Because I have seen many, many haunts once again home or pro die on the vine because nobody knew the funk about them.
I mean like one of the things that was so weird for us, like we talked about the revelation, the haunt that was open for all of two weeks here in the city, we found out about it, Not through a commercial, not through a flyer.
We found out about it when we checked to make sure that our haunt was listed correctly in the newspaper.
[46:59] That is not how you want people to find out about your odd and there's a reason only eight people showed up that night.
[47:07] So yeah, bad or too too little or bad marketing will tank a haunt very, very quickly.
So how are you going to handle the marketing? What are you going to do?
Um How are you gonna get your name out there and establish yourself and establish your brand?
Because this goes back to the unique selling point. This goes back to the other questions we were having people ask now that you should know what your unique selling point is that will guide your marketing. But now you've got to think about the brass tacks. Where's the money going? How are you doing it?
I like I said I've seen haunts with absolutely terrible ideas. I knew one haunt this was going to date me very, very badly in about five seconds here.
But their whole marketing budget I shipped you not was based upon my space. Marketing.
Yeah. He blew his entire marketing budget. Other than I think some flyers um on a digital campaign on my space.
Um Yeah, I'm old.
[48:04] But I am not marketing on my space and being successful because of it all.
[48:10] I'm not quite that old, you dig it.
So it's like yeah, it did not work, it was an abject fucking failure and if he had told me about it before he eat it all the money at it, I would have been, I smacked him around for even having the idea, he gets the pimp.
Yeah. For more tips on marketing by the way, you can go to episode 35 per guerilla marketing episode 82 for questions that you need to ask yourself about marketing.
And then we also interviewed um Alex Berlin. Yes, excellent episode.
Yes, and that was episode 2 83 Alex who is currently in the city.
Yeah, we've been we've seen him once and we're hoping to see him again very soon because he's hanging out in new Orleans for a while and doing his thing here.
Wish him well. I hope Alex you're listening to this. Hope the new Orleans is treating you right.
Uh But yeah, marketing is such a tricky thing and it's so easily overlooked. You need to be thinking about this once again before the first screw goes in before your first expenditure because hey, budget, you've got a budget for this ship.
[49:17] And also, you know, you need to know the direction of this just because you're going to start work on the marketing way sooner than you probably think from a timeline perspective, I'll put it like this, if you're,
opening a haunted october this year and you're not already working on your marketing and we're in, you know, it's sides of april, pretty much when we're recording this.
If you're not already working on it, you're behind your way the fun behind Actually, Yeah, if you're not already recruiting for a first time, haunt your Behind your behind.
[49:47] Honestly, if you're seeing this and you're listening to this episode, I'm going to start a haunt and it's not just a small pro haunt that you yourself can handle.
I mean, small home haunting rather, and my advice honestly, is wait till next year start getting your ducks in a row, start work, but plan on opening next year.
[50:06] Trust me. I've seen so many haunts die because they did not allow themselves adequate time.
Not none of runway to get going. And yeah, don't don't make that mistake.
Don't be ambitious. Don't try to open a haunt 2022. If you're trying to go pro and go big now, um do a home haunt, Do something small, do something that's actually within the means of these next six months or so.
And don't staff around with a full but also, you know, eventually you will want to open.
Um and so you have to stop the planning and and just do it eventually.
If you never do it, then you're never opened. And and do remember that no plan survives contact with the enemy.
As the saying goes, that's very true here too. And number nine, we're wrapping it up now.
What's the back story and theme of your haunt?
Yeah. We we've talked about the backstory thing. We've harped on a lot marketing and backstory are things we harp on all the time because there are things were a passionate about and be things we do as part of our day jobs, writing marketing.
These are things that we do as part of our day job and have a decent handle on at the very least.
Yeah. What is the backstory and the theme for your hunting? Going to be what story are you trying to tell? This ties back into the U. S. P.
[51:25] Because that that unique selling point of your haunt is going to be the center upon which everything rotates.
Your marketing is going to stem from it. Your backstory is gonna stem from it, your market. And literally everything that we talked about here is going to stem from that one way or another. Your location is gonna be hinging upon that.
Uh So yeah, what you need to do is be thinking about your backstory in conjunction with that USP.
So the idea is when um,
when you do go pro, when you do open or whatever is,
you already have something that the customers have sank their teeth into and hopefully understand and can tie in because most people's first exposure to your haunted attraction Once again, Home Hunter Pro haunt,
is going to be your website and your backstory.
Yeah, that's literally the first thing people are gonna see and so if it's good, it can sell a lot of tickets and it can make your haunt better for pretty much free because it doesn't cost you money to write a backstory.
Exactly. This is one thing you don't got a budget unless you're hiring a writer to do and then you've got a budget for it.
But let's find someone else to do it. Then you gotta budget, but.
[52:40] But it's pretty much free, it's the first exposure and the first thing people are going to see about your haunt other than like the flyer other than whatever the marketing is to get them to check out your haunt.
Um, and yeah, it's important. And the thing about it is we've seen this so many times, People open haunts, they have no backstory, no theme, no theme is we're blah, blah, blah, haunt weekly But what does that mean?
I if I don't know ship about you and your haunt, what should that mean to me?
What can it mean to me nothing. It can't mean a damn thing because you haven't told me a story.
You haven't given me a theme, you haven't given me,
anything to associate with what we have, the carnival theme, the traveling sideshow, circus style theme that we use, because I've always been fascinated with side shows and we have,
um, you know, Bernie Baxter based upon new Orleans history, fictional stories based upon the very real history of a city that has had its more than its share of funked up things happen.
Exactly, It's pretty easy to do.
So basically be thinking about this now because once again, it's all going to hinge on that USP, but having a backstory lined up before you start putting paint on the wall before you start building anything makes it so much easier and gives you a direction to take everything in.
Yeah. And I would also, you know, if you.
[54:06] I would plan out the first couple of years at least.
[54:12] I would too. Um Absolutely, that's a great idea.
Alright, but that's all we have, that's the nine questions to ask yourself before starting a haunt their tons more. This is just nine that often get overlooked and the backstory one gets overlooked so quickly and the website one gets overlooked so easily.
People don't think oh yeah, I need a website. It's not enough just to build a haunt and put it up in a building somewhere, I need a website and it presents well, okay, you know um how are you going to do it?
And facebook is not a website. No, it is not, it's a thing that you can connect to your website but it's not a website and it is honestly very important.
I find it very interesting that the haunted attraction industry is so married to facebook but that seems to be where the customers are. So I can't object to it now that that may eventually change though.
Oh yeah, and and you're gonna need your tiktok, you're gonna need your insta so you're gonna need that type of stuff too.
But yeah, it's it's crazy that the haunted attraction industry is still so tied to facebook and it seems to be where the customers are. So I can't criticize it.
[55:23] Well on that note everyone, thank you very much for joining us for the past hours.
We ramble on about nine questions to ask yourself before you open a haunt weekly please please do take a minute Check us out at all the places we are.
We're haunt weekly dot com. haunt weekly on twitter, haunt weekly on facebook and youtube dot com slash haunt weekly Also wherever you get your podcasts from were there, I guarantee you were stalking you talking to you in particular.
Dave Now, I don't know if anyone named Dave is even listening, but there there is someone named Dave listening, he's probably freaked out, Probably not,
but until next time I'm jonathan and this has been haunt weekly episode 3333 threes.
Talking about questions to ask for opening a haunt weekly See you all next week we will probably answer one of the great questions we got in last week's Question of the week. We'll see you all then.
haunted attraction entertainment community, whether an actor owner, just playing official motto, we aim to be a podcast for you and we return to you with the luckiest episode ever. If three happens to be your lucky number.
Okay, Yes, because it's episode 3 33 Yes, 3, 3, 3.
[0:45] No, it's very much funnier when we hit 350, but yes indeed 333, we're gonna be asking ourselves nine questions,
that you need to ask yourself before you go pro and yeah, there's a lot of great questions here definitely before we get into things too deeply, take a minute, check us out at all of our locations,
we're haunt weekly dot com. haunt weekly on twitter, haunt weekly on facebook.
Follow us there like us, follow us whatever you're doing.
Youtube dot com slash haunt weekly is the Youtube channel. If we reference past episodes, that is the easiest way to go listen to those episodes.
Yes, they're all available in haunt weekly dot com but the Youtube channel makes it just that much easier to me, it's nice to my computer to jump in and remind me to mute it.
Um and also, you know, you can find us on apple podcast, google play stitcher, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast from, I pay someone else to handle distribution. We should be everywhere.
So anyways, yes, we're gonna be tackling nine questions to ask yourself before you go pro and.
[1:50] Okay, go ahead. You had something like this was inspired by a question we got you a private message from Jason briner and if you'll remember last week's question of the week, we asked you what questions do you have for us?
Yeah. And we got a lot of great responses and uh, Sam Farrell asked us about age limits for customers that is going to be a future episode.
Sam I can, I don't know when, but we will be doing it maybe next week, it may be four weeks from now. I don't know, it's going to depend upon what happens between A and B.
But we will be covering that's a great one and when we actually have a lot of useful things we can talk about on that, so that's gonna be good.
Um Chris Kay said if money were no object, what's your most wanted item?
That is a really good question. Um and it kind of ties into some of the others.
I don't know if that's a full episode, but I've been trying to think of an answer to that one ever since he asked it because there are definitely some cfx masks that I want.
[2:47] Um but honestly if money were no object,
one of the first things I'm sure we would do is probably get into pneumatic, so pneumatic props at least some I'd want a building, I don't think haunted house sell buildings.
I get your logic there.
This doesn't say anything about a vendor, It just says what would I want?
I want a building, like a building big enough to hold all of my future dreams, so this is like an imaginary place obviously.
Um And all the stuff we already have.
But barring that, yeah, I think mathematics would be on the list of things to do. Mathematics are expensive to get into.
[3:30] Um there's a lot of great props out there. And one of the things I do love about like Transworld and all the haunt trade shows is that you get to see how this art form is progressing and it is an art form.
A pneumatic props are huge art form and there's always been been steady progress.
I mean as someone who has been stuck using spirit animatronics before, some real ones would actually be very very nice.
Now one of the fears I would have is those products those props do break, they do wear out and they're very expensive and we don't have the knowledge to fix them if they break. Yeah.
So maybe we should also ahead in a pneumatic course in that well.
So I've been looking at the basic pneumatic type thing because I've been wanting to build something small,
that's weatherproof for the yard display just to add a little movement to it um for years and I just I've never found the time to do it.
[4:27] Yeah and it's tough and it's a big upfront expenses. Not only do you have the proper but you have the tank that, your air tank, tank compressor that you have to have, you have got all the equipment you have to buy just to have one prop once you get one prop in place.
Okay Pneumatic products are still expensive but you don't have to repeat that upfront cost.
Yeah or the upfront learning curve. Exactly.
It's one of those things where we just haven't been able to cross the bar for that up front cost both time.
Knowledge and money, Kevin Hopkins asked what's avoid you see in the market? What our vendors not supplying?
[5:02] That is a great question, and I mean, I mean that may be a full episode or something like that down the road, um, to give a quick answer, though.
[5:12] I think we are not want for masks for props.
[5:17] I think things targeted at home haunted house because a lot of the vendors focus on pro haunts and so the money is it makes sense.
It is, but I think there is a market for home haunted house for you know medium tier budget kind of people.
That's a really good answer because you just got me thinking about how,
there's this big gap between like spirit halloween slash home depot level and pro haunt there, those two things are a mild goddamn apart and there's nothing that slots neatly into that space.
Exactly, because I mean I would buy something if there was a store that was a mid tier store that I knew about that did relatively good quality like pro sumer level.
Yeah exactly. Like when we talk about like tools, power tools, Rio b comes up as the pro sumer level tool. A lot of people consider that Prosumer level.
I don't know I've never had any issue with Rio but we have a lot of Ryobi tools, I've never noticed anything wrong. Then again we're kind of pro sumer so maybe it is.
[6:20] But yeah, yeah we we definitely don't buy the cheapest tools.
Not anymore. Not since we we can't we have learned from our harbor freight errant ways.
Yes, yes it's yeah don't do that. I think harbor freight and spirit motors are made by the same people.
Well the harbor freight Chicago electric specifically because they do have tears at harbor freight now that are at least not horrible.
I'm not saying good um my answer to that was going to be that we have all this professional stuff.
[6:57] Um, what we are, I think lacking from haunt vendors is vendors that supply the more mundane stuff of running the business.
Um, we have a million places to get great silicon masks. We have a million places to get props, both static and pneumatic and animatronic, whatever.
And we have tons of places to get the tech stuff, your boo boxes, you know, any, any tech stuff you need, but there's a lot of mundane business stuff out there and.
[7:27] It doesn't have a dedicated vendor, like we have dedicated haunt weekly and that's good because we are a weird industry that has very specific and very strange insurance requirements,
but we also probably need like any business you would use in running a business could probably use a haunt specific one, like accounting.
Yeah, exactly, stuff like that or just like a business package just to package it all together and say if you are starting out, these are the things you need, you know?
Yeah, and that would be like like okay legalzoom, we need a Legalzoom for haunt weekly we need that because that'll help you.
I mean, yeah legalism will help you do a lot of business stuff, you gonna, you know, establish your LLC, you can,
do things like that, but there's so much more that goes into a haunt and there's a point where like Legalzoom just can't,
help you because you're just too weird of a business for them.
They have not actually been able to target that, they have no motivation to target that niche is what I'm saying, they're a big company that likes to target the protest over there. The Avengers basically they're a marvel movie.
We need our niche, you know, and I know that it's been tried before, but I think that having a temporary agency, uh services agency to find actors and recruit the talent, you need to build the haunt.
[8:54] Yeah, that's good too. I mean there's a lot of mundane, comparatively mundane stuff and running a business that haunts our unique enough,
and weird enough in that a a separate business that specializes in it makes sense, but that specialized business doesn't make sense, forcing you to either figure it out yourself,
good luck with that or go to a company that.
[9:16] Isn't really catering to that and and kind of taking a different direction.
So both of those I think that that would be my answer there.
And finally James thurman um who creates themselves the best animatronics on the market.
[9:32] I honestly don't I don't have an answer to this one because we haven't bought enough or heard enough about them.
Exactly. I mean I know that like scare factory is kind of persona non grata to a lot of hunters because of issues they've had.
I don't know if those issues are ongoing.
[9:48] Um and I know that fright props is deeply loved and honestly I love fried props to I have never, I've okay, we can't say we never bought anything that we have, we've never bought an animatronic or a big prop from there.
We bought a lot, but a decent amount of smaller stuff over the years.
Um you know, it's a good place once again to get some of that tech stuff.
We were discussing your boomboxes, anything that's raspberry pi based Kickstarter kids. Yeah, that we bought stuff like that but we've never bought like $5000 electric chair prop or whatever.
Yeah, so I've got to say that I did really enjoy getting that ad for an electric chair animatronic.
Yeah, I don't remember what was the story was like, it was something like yeah, but it was just the chair, it was literally just a fucking chair. Supply your own actor.
Yeah, it wasn't even an animatronic, it's like put an actor in this chair was and it'll work.
It was, it was a chair plus a speaker and maybe a strobe light and yeah, it was, it was ridiculous, hilarious. I'm like, wow, this electric chair, You know, animatronic crop is really cheap, it was like $200 or something.
I'm like fun, we can do that without even thinking twice what else it come with. Not the problem.
[11:02] Yeah, nothing. I've got fucking chairs, dude can pull a chair out of the fucking addict, that's easy.
Oh God, but who creates the best? I we're we're not qualified to answer that one, I put that one back out to the community um so if you all have a thought on that one, please do let us know haunt weekly dot com.
Haunt weekly on twitter, haunt weekly on facebook and youtube dot com slash haunt weekly You answer that one, we don't have the expertise, y'all take care of that,
um but we do have a question of the week for this week and I think it's an important one for the haunt industry to really be thinking about um what does success look like to you and your haunted house,
what is your definition of success? Is that money?
Not totally not an invalid thing if you're, if you're a business person and you're running your haunt to be a business, that's a fine fine end goal to have um but yeah, what does success look like to you for me.
[12:03] I think success looks like the smiles and laughter I see is people are leaving are hard.
Yeah, that's what success looks like to me. Yeah, I think the generational fan base that we've built up,
like just the really loyal people come back year after year and then eventually bring their kids this phenomenal to me.
Yeah, that, that blows my mind that we have people taking their kids to the hall and I was like, yeah, I came here as a teenager,
and loved it and now my little little kid is old enough, you know, he, he or she is like, you know, at least of walking age and they're coming to the home because they want to, they, they loved it that much.
They're sharing it with their kids. They wanted to make sure their kids got the experience and that's just Crazy, as funny to me, it makes me feel way older than it probably should, to be honest with you.
Because like most of these people, most of the visitors that are doing that came as teens, so it's perfectly reasonable.
15 years later, they would have kids of their own. It's not it's not crazy.
It's not like it came through when they were one and now we have kids, it's not that they came as teens, so mathematically, it all tracks, but jesus, every time someone tells me that it's like, don't do that, I feel the stepmother now I'm going to die.
But no, it is amazing. I do think the smiles, the laughter that we see as people leave, the haunt that is.
[13:28] Every time I think about giving up or not doing it again, that is what I pop into my brain to remind me why we do this.
Yeah, and you can answer this question on a personal note, if you don't know haunt weekly and if you're if you're an actor, what does success look like to you? What is a good, what's the sign of a good scare?
Is you know, making someone pee themselves code yellowing or is it just a great reaction or is it when people are responding to your character in a certain way?
So it can be for literally anyone in the haunt industry, what does success look like to you when you're haunting?
I think it's a great question, I'm gonna be very excited to answer that question, haunt weekly dot com.
Haunt weekly twitter, haunt weekly on facebook, you know the drill by now leave a comment, we will see it and probably included in the next episode, We're very likely including next episode.
[14:19] So that brings us to the crux of this week's episode nine questions to ask yourself mostly before going pro, we did a whole episode about why we don't go pro,
and I think that was an important episode for us to do because even though I have great admiration um,
for pro haunted house we asked ourselves these questions and basically came up with the answer of,
that's not for us.
[14:57] You know what I mean? We we episode 93 episode 93 way back, hell, that was 200 plus episodes ago.
Yeah, we never did the follow up while we might go pro because I think that would've been a much shorter episode Yeah, oh man, but but yeah, seriously,
in a way this is kind of the follow up to that oddly enough, because we're examining the questions,
that made us make that decision not to,
and they may make help you make that decision not to, or very possibly they will help you make the decision to go pro.
So these are nine questions, I think they're all extremely important to ask and to think about before you make any decision about jumping, especially if you're making the leap from home haunt approach, haunt weekly,
even, but you can also do many of these questions if you're thinking about doing your first Home Haunt or yard display or big halloween thing this year.
So first question crystal okay, what is your why, why do you want to do this? Why do you want to go pro?
Um is it just because you love haunting so much?
Have you been in the industry some and this is just your passion and what does it look like if you decide.
[16:19] That this is gonna be your job now, this is what your livelihood depends on and that's a rough transition for a lot of people to make.
[16:29] You know, it's amazing how much you can enjoy something when it is a hobby, when it is an advocation.
And it's not, it's something you are making the conscious choice to spend time on and know that you can walk away at any moment from um if you make it a business you're taking away that right?
So the and and like I said the asking why you're doing this is important if you're going to do a home haunt to why are you doing this, why are you going to outlay a not insignificant amount of money,
and time into something that will never recoup either. Yeah.
[17:08] I mean, God knows, we have spent so many thousands of dollars on running our haunt and never come anywhere near recouping even the base costs and never expected to,
you know, we do it because we enjoy doing it and ry for what we do is basically that we love it.
Yeah. And we just covered it, you know. Yeah. It's to provide memories for people and it's a creative outlet. I mean, it's got a lot going for it for us.
Yeah. It's creative outlet. We get to see the smiles we put on faces and it's basically how we give back to the neighborhood and a big part of it because,
I mean we're not super involved people in other aspects and Ellie Ellie Ellie.
Ellie is crazy like that, but we're not um and the result of that is that this is how we have the most famous address in algiers Louisiana right now.
Certainly the most famous home address.
[18:09] I mean we're not difficult people to find.
[18:13] You can't docks us. It's all out there already basically because of the haunt, you can't docks what is already public just saying.
But no, it's it's a lot. Yeah, we know why we do it. But when we ask ourselves this question, this was why we decided not to go pro basically this whole thing of why why did we want to go pro because we wanted to do this more.
But then we stopped and thought about all of the obligations we have, how this goes from being something that's purely for fun into something that's a business and has to be run like one if it's going to succeed.
[18:49] And you know, we don't have the resources to quit our day jobs to do this full time.
And that's basically what it and we're not young anymore. We can't do 40 hours a week at a day job and you know another 40-60 hours a week building a new haunt weekly just we don't have those.
We don't have, we don't have the mental physical or financial. Financial.
Well if we keep the day jobs, we might have the financial, but but we don't have the other kind of capital we need.
[19:24] We might have the money side of if we keep our day jobs.
But that's frustrating because yeah, we do want to do this more and we would like to make it a bigger part of our lives.
But we don't run a haunted house to get fire permits.
No, exactly. We don't run a haunted house to make lease payments or rent payments and deal with all the headache that comes with doing business in the city.
And new Orleans is not the most difficult city to do business in. No.
Um I I know this pretty well. It's pretty difficult to hold events in though.
Yeah, haunted house is fall under a lot of times. Well yeah, because the whole city is a mess with with anything that is not one of three types of business if you're wanting to launch a bar, a restaurant.
[20:13] Or retail or a retail store.
New Orleans is easy. It's really truly easy, like it's from like even the bar thing, it's silly easy.
The hard part with getting a bar going and as we found out from some friends we have is not new Orleans, it's the fucking state and and their handling of liquor life because state handles liquor licenses.
[20:38] That is the problem there. But still if you're running one of those three types of businesses, new Orleans will stand and deliver for you pretty quickly. It's all super easy.
Um If you don't want to run one of those three types of businesses, the city doesn't know how to deal with you.
And I think that's true of a lot of places to, I don't think that's just a new Orleans thing anyways, but no, why do you want to do this?
Why are you doing this? And can that why be better met through a home haunt or through something else? It's the first question to ask yourself 2nd question, do you have experience?
And this once again, this entails everything.
If you are doing, thinking about doing your first home haunt or yard haunt or something like that.
Ask yourself what experience do you have that can help you? And if you don't have a lot, maybe start really small focus on doing just a couple of things and getting those really well and then expanding over the next few years.
Yeah. And if you do have experience, have you made those business connections that you need to make this successful because business is a lot about networking.
Like I didn't get that in college, They didn't say you're going to have to network in order to do whatever it is you're wanting to do.
But it's true, I mean if you don't have the networks in place to like find actors, find the best deals on whatever animatronic you're looking for or things like that,
then you're not going to, you're going to have a rough time of it.
[22:07] Just put it there. You definitely um if you have no or limited experience, the best advice I can give anyone in this situation is one start small, do not get ambitious out of the gate.
I understand that you're excited about this idea so you want to build the giant, you know, home haunt, take up the whole yard and driveway and if you're independently wealthy go for it, you know, whatever and you may be able to pull it off.
But if you want to enjoy it, start small, learn as you go expand as you learn and it doesn't take that long.
Like we went from doing a porch thing to using the whole haunt garage to having most of the driveway now queue line That all happened in the span of like 5-8 years.
[22:57] Yeah, Yeah. And you know there's a reason that most businesses either succeed or fail within five years because that is the learning growing period for any new adventure.
So what experience do you have? What connections do you have think about it?
Just kind of figure out what you have and how you can apply the third one.
Okay, what is your unique selling point? We have talked about this several. Yes.
You know, is it the idea behind your haunt that's going to make you you, is it the theme of specific scare giant animatronics? I mean what is it that you want people to know you for and figure this out before you start?
You know, your USP, you're basically answering the question why would anyone go to your haunt this?
Another haunting the area or in some cases any haunt in the country?
What makes your haunt stand out? Why should customers go to you specifically?
And once again, if you are a home haunt her, this still applies to you.
What makes your home unique? There are probably other home haunts in your area, what do you do that's special and unique.
[24:11] And you need to think about that because that's where you want to put your focus in terms of when you're doing that bill, when you're putting in that work.
[24:20] Centering everything around your unique selling point is an important thing to do because it's what everything's gonna hinge around when it comes to, why people choose you over.
Haunted house or activity why? Yeah, it goes directly into your branding which was episode 83.
[24:39] Yeah you need to think about this before you have put the first screw into a panel before you've built the first prop or bought the first prop, you need to be thinking about this because that unique selling point is going to determine where your resources go,
and that resource could be time, it could be money, it could be energy but you're going to direct the lion's share of your resources to that unique selling point.
And I think that's a really important thing that a lot of haunts forget I mean if you're the 13th gate or something like that you can have a unique selling point.
But yeah we have these movie movie quality sets if you're the headless horseman um you can have you know we're the kick as trail haunt weekly giant statues.
You can have these things haunted house sorry as headless horseman haunted house we were talking about headless horseman last night, that's how I got fell into that trap.
But yeah but I mean haunted house has the giant thing, it is overloaded with haunted stuff.
Yeah. You know what their unique selling point is 11 thing leaps to mind and it's in the marketing to Yeah, but you think about it one thing leaps to mind immediately. What's that for your haunt?
That's a very important thing. Number four once again a good question regardless if you're going pro.
[25:55] Um or going for or starting your home haunt your budget,
how much money do you really have here and this is a tough one to be honest about. Yeah.
Yeah you have to have a real conversation with yourself about this because I mean it's hard to estimate what you don't know because you haven't done this before, you know that puts in a layer.
[26:24] Yeah, figuring out your budget is probably the single most difficult task before launching any kind of haunt.
And that's true for home haunts pro haunts and anything because like you said if you've never done it before, you don't really know what you're walking into and like right now lumber costs are still wonky.
What is you know how much lumber can you really afford? That's a tough question.
I mean for pro haunts with lots of money, the lumber situation has not been that big of a deal, but for home hunters and for people with very small budgets,
doubling your material cost, which is functionally what's going on still.
[27:08] Leads to real problems because if your budget for your homeowners say $2,000, which would be a good budget for a decent sized home on actually you can do a lot with that.
[27:18] You could, you know once upon a time but now it seems like with lumber prices they're coming down but they seem to be coming down slowly,
you know, which is bad news for us because we might be looking at some lumber and the not too distant future. So Yeah.
Yeah, so I mean like you there are so many little things that cost that you have to take into account, you know, it's not just the big things um,
and and some of that includes things that we'll get to in a minute but,
but I mean and if you're doing a pro haunt, you need to be thinking about paying for less than fun things.
You need to be thinking about how you're gonna pay your staff, how you're gonna pay for all those building permits, you're going to need fire inspections and all that.
Um at some point you're likely going to run into a point where you need to gain or bring in outside funding,
because a pro haunt in particular is a very expensive operation,
even, I mean there are ways you can reduce those costs and like if you wanted to reduce it in new Orleans, one of the first things I would tell you is open it somewhere down the river.
[28:34] Yeah because you can get land cheaper buildings cheaper, you can get everything cheaper there. They'll cut your call significantly.
Now that's difficult because you're going to struggle to get new orleanians and city folk to go to the country. So you're also limiting your market especially when there's you know a haunted house within public transportation distance.
Yeah. I mean I can take the streetcar why not from my house because we're across the river but okay, I can take the ferry to a streetcar and be at the mortuary totally via public transit or just the bus.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can get to the mortuary by public transit or walking or biking if you're living in the city.
Um I can't do that with rise, you can't do that with 1330 for living in the world feeling Baton Rouge so I I don't know enough about baton rouge public transit to be honest with you to tell you what you can or can't do there.
Yeah, technically you can bike to um.
[29:30] Louisiana Nightmare? Is that new Orleans? Nightmare?
New Orleans Nightmare. Thank you. I'm like Louisiana nightmare? No, that's wrong that we had a bit of a night long time ago?
We're all a little dumb brain I spent on my brain's doing work today, I'm out of brains.
[29:48] Um but yeah, you need to be thinking about that because there's a million different little expenses that are gonna come up and no matter and here's the thing,
no matter how well you plan, no matter how much advice you get,
I mean, and this is a good time to consider paying for that consultant to tell you about to warn you about as many landmines as possible because that's kind of what a consultant would do in this stage is tell you these are the pitfalls, these are the landmines don't step on and be aware of.
[30:19] And and if you don't, aren't using a consultant for your startup, then you have to plan for when you go over budget because it's going to happen, something's going to come up.
That is completely unexpected, that you didn't know about.
Um have you built it into your budget, where there's that, you know, excess.
I know that we've talked about that on an episode. I can't remember which one, but well, one of the challenges you face is you kind of have to ask this question twice you go, what's my budget?
Okay, well this is the budget, this is what things, right? And then there's no, no, no. What's your real budget?
What's the actual amount you can drop on this because you're going to go over budget? Almost guaranteed.
So what's the real ceiling, what's the real budget?
Yeah, yeah. You need to think about that number five. crystal Do you have a location?
Is the location near enough people like we um we've talked about this several times about where we would want to hunt and how many people it would need to be needed,
like because you're going to have.
[31:31] We we roughly estimated about 100,000 people we'd want to be near that many people with easy access to where we were going to set up whenever we were talking about going.
Easy access does not just mean practical, easy access.
It means emotional like energy wise and it's like I think Algiers has easy access to the city because we do realistically we do you make that commute every morning to go across the river and go to work.
It's not any longer to come to Algiers than it is.
Pretty much go to your work from anywhere else in the city.
Yeah. Or just to get across, you know, one edge of the city to like the the the outside of the quarter.
You know, it's the same amount of time you were in Lakeview and trying to get to the quarter for example, it would be about the same amount of time. Yeah.
[32:24] Um but it's but so many people because you have to cross water to get to algiers, that's a mental expense on them.
But they don't live over here. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, do you have a location? Are there enough people nearby? You said 100,000?
That's a good starting point. Yeah. Um Do you have ample and easy parking, jesus christ this one?
So many people like so many places that whenever we were thinking of going pro we just didn't immediately. Yeah exactly because there was no parking and and parking because new Orleans is a historic city. I know big shock right?
We're a historic city and one of the things that kind of comes with new Orleans being a historic city is it was not built for cars.
Yeah. Now here's the thing that if you were to set up in a tourist or like business center where people are used to walking around then you might not need the parking.
Yeah because people are used to having to walk there and we actually did the whole episode on parking.
It's a great episode and I think it's one of the things everybody overlooks when choosing a location because 53 episode, 53 crystals got the list here.
So every time I'm like yeah we did an episode and they used to listen to that she's going to chime in with the episode which is good. It's good. I'm glad someone can do that.
[33:48] But yeah we did the whole thing about parking cause this is something that is tremendously overlooked,
when choosing a haunt location and it's absolutely nuts to me that like, and there have been some very successful hunts and there are some very successful haunts where the parking situation sucks.
Hell's gate parking situation sucks. You have to park so far away, there's a shuttle bus To take you to hell's gate.
Um 13th gate locally, terrible parking situation.
We literally park semi illegally every time we go to 13th gate because we parked in the casino lot and then just don't go to the casino.
[34:28] No one's ever said anything. There's a big, it's a huge garage even when 13th gate is open, no one's in it.
Um Yeah, we park in the casino parking garage um for free And walked to the 13th gate and I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to do that, but I also know that like we've been doing it for 15 plus years now and no one says shit.
So you can't, you gotta actually tut tut us if you want us to change our behavior.
So is location A. D. A. Compliant already? Or do you have to do work to get it there?
[35:02] You know? And apparently we're going to have some background noise. Sorry, I don't know what the hell that is that's um doing long long stuff next for you.
But yeah A. D. A. Compliance is a big big deal. Uh Mostly because retrofitting something that's not A D. A compliant for 88 compliance is a nightmare.
Yeah, it's a huge nightmare. Yes.
We're actually dealing with this on campus right now because my building that I'm in is not 88 compliance.
It was it was built before. Like people thought about like not people that we're not we're differently abled will say, but people in wheelchairs were not considered in the design of this building at all. No, not at all.
You know, there are stairs, there's no elevator, there's there's bathrooms where you have to take stairs to go to the bathroom.
Yeah, exactly. I'm on the second floor. I have to go downstairs and all the way the other end of the building every time I need to.
[36:00] Yeah. It's not fun. Yeah. So this building was like not designed For the 88. So what they're doing is they're actually gonna move her department and then the other departments in the building out to a different building that is a. D. A compliant.
There was a newer building and they're basically gonna move the campus police. I understand it to the first floor.
We have no idea, everything is still in flux. We just know they're moving, there are moving is happening but they're gonna basically only use the bottom floor because the building is completely a. D. A Compliant if you only use one floor.
[36:32] Exactly and waste the other two floors one, it's only a two story.
It was, it was supposed to be a temporary building during the war.
Oh, you ever notice how temporary solutions become permanent solutions real fucking fast?
[36:48] That's one of those things right? Also and related to this, have you spoken with your local fire marshal about any renovations you need for fire code compliance?
This is tricky because and we're gonna talk more about the fire marshal stuff in a second.
Um but basically a lot of build the requirements for haunted attraction are different than requirements for like a retail space or for, you know, like a restaurant or whatever.
And one of the things you run into is like we are required to have sprinklers, not every space is required to have sprinklers, Especially if they were built some time ago before those standards were really common.
And you run into this problem, a lot of New Orleans or seemingly modern buildings were built actually in the 60s or 50s even and therefore they don't have the latest greatest fire protection systems in there.
So that's something gonna run you can run into and guess what, just like retrofitting for a D. A compliance.
Retrofitting for fire code compliance is a nightmare to many, many human monies will be expended.
Yeah, well there was that um one haunt that we reported on that had talked to their fire marshal,
got approval for their plan, then bought the place and then we're told no, that won't work.
[38:11] You know that that's not gonna work for you too. You have to have a bigger water tower that you're putting because they were in like a field or something.
So yeah, fire suppression, making sure all those eyes and teas are Yeah, and, and, and bear in mind we did the episode about the Six Flags fire, the haunted castle fire.
Um That incident is what really sets the tone here for hunters unfortunately, because every, because basically if the teal teal teal d listen long didn't listen of that teal deal, that sounds weird.
But anyways of that episode is basically the fire marshal's got blamed for everything and to be fair, they were fuckinup to be fair, but they did fuckinup and they really did deserve the blame.
But now every fire marshal everywhere in this country is scared the ship of that happening to them.
Yeah, that the people will die in a haunted attraction fire and they'll be the ones that the blame falls on two.
Yeah, and like, I'm sure there are going to be new safety codes after the story that we reported on last week about the kid falling out of the tower.
Oh yeah, yeah, the drop tower, Yeah, I'm positive there's gonna be new and that of course is going to impact amusement parks more than haunts, but I guaran goddamn tee you some of that backlash will hit dark rides and other haunted attraction.
[39:35] Guaran goddamn tee that's gonna come around, you're gonna and that's why we reported on it is for that exact reason, It's like yeah, it may not be direct, But you're gonna hear about this again.
I'm very sure, very confident in that. No six.
Moving on because we've got four more questions and not a lot of time.
Um How will you track purchases for the haunt? And do you know what vendors you want to use for the things you can't make?
This is a big one and one we're terrible at.
We do not track our expenditures for the haunt worth as ship. We're going to try to get better about it this year.
We haven't made any expenses expenditures yet. We're going to try to get better but we have not done that. And so we have to get estimate.
So so here's the thing whenever I find a new hobby that eventually.
[40:30] Turns into a business and there's only been one that I started out um thinking of it as going to be a business Whenever I 1st started.
[40:42] Um I wish I attract my expenses from the beginning, the very first purchase of anything because it made taxes so much harder.
And if you've got merchandise and stuff, you need account of all of your inventory.
[40:59] Like inventory. If you sell actual goods, taxes are so much worse.
[41:07] As a sole proprietor in a consulting business at least I don't have to worry about fucking inventory.
Yeah I did with the with the headdress stuff it's rough it really is.
So how are you going to keep track of all this If you and this is true. Once again home haunt or haunt, you need to know where the money's going because of his pro haunted house Way more important admittedly.
But even as a home haunt to make sure that you're not going wildly over budget or that you're not spending money in stupid ways.
Because the thing about it is this it doesn't matter if it's pro haunt or a home haunt if you spend too much money and it becomes untenable.
You close. It doesn't matter if it's a business or not.
The same thing that kills most pro haunts. Not being able to make money because they spend too much money. Usually the cost overran the money they brought in.
[41:57] Um The same thing can happen to a home haunt. They spent so much money that their discretionary funds couldn't absorb the blow and now they're taking food out of their mouths to do this haunt.
Yeah and you know I know that I used to um use shoe boxed.
[42:14] Um I think there's there's still around and still have a free program but I don't know about you but they're still around.
Yeah you just take photos of the receipts and it saves it all for you.
And there are some things like um Square if you use square or clover um for your processing out for whenever you take payments. Because you need to be thinking about that too.
You know the other side of this. So when you take payments um it'll track some of that inventory stuff for you.
Exactly. So be thinking about how you're going to track stuff once again home or pro in this case. I think it's just gonna read that title is one of the questions to ask before starting a haunt.
And because I'm realizing everything works for both.
I didn't think about it that way when we were writing the notes um number seven, who will build your website and I would attack on social media presence. Yeah.
Like who's handling all that for you? Who's handling the digital ship?
Yeah. Are you doing that yourself? If so Great.
But here's the thing and I see this all the time in my day job. One of the things I do is I do copyright enforcement For a financial services client, medium sized one.
[43:27] And basically what happens is that it's a field. And I'm trying not to give away too much of the plot here.
But it's a field where anybody can enter it.
Like you take a couple of correspondence courses, you can probably do a decent job in this field. It's not like being a full account where you have to have certain certifications.
It's not like that. You can actually get into this with a correspondence course and it is an important financial service to. I'll add that you can get into this with very limited startup and just a little bit of time to learn how to do it.
[43:58] What happens is basically these pitchman will say, hey, all you need to do is take my course, learn how to do this and set up a website and break in the monies,
and the whole set up a website thing is doing some heavy fucking lifting in that.
It is not as easy as they make it out to be when they're trying to get your money for their correspondence course on this particular service.
Um it is not that simple and the result of that um is a lot of people take them spend the money on the course, spend the time learning how to do it and maybe even become pretty good at it honestly.
But then when they have to set up a website, they copy and paste all of my clients content, images, text and everything.
Sometimes just, I'll just copy, there's because they have no idea how to set up and fill the website or social media presence and the result of that is I end up shutting the business down literally.
[44:53] I thank them. Yeah, every, every two weeks, every two weeks we do, we look for people who have stolen the marketing and every two weeks we find them and that's been going on for like 10 fucking years or more than that. Probably close to 12 years. Yeah, exactly.
And so yeah, if you do not have the skills to build and maintain and fill a website and filling is an important thing that you've got to have images and text, you've got to fill that ship.
Um if you do not have those skills, who the fucky are just doing it for you.
Figure that out before you start. And are they just copying it from somewhere else?
Figure that sh it out early. Figure it out quick and make it work Alright. Number eight.
[45:37] How will you market your first year? What is going to be your marketing strategy?
Um Yeah, this is an important one because no two haunts are going to have the same marketing strategy because no two haunts in the same position and you're not gonna have the same marketing strategy year after year after year.
So it's very important to sit down and figure out what that first year is going to look like from a marketing standpoint.
How are you going to announce yourself to the world?
[46:05] Yeah, because you can't rely on word of mouth because you hadn't been around, nobody knows who you are.
Yeah, you can lean more into word of mouth your 2nd, 3rd and 4th and subsequent years, but you can't rely on it in your first. So what's that? What's the approach going to be? Are you gonna do local media?
Are you gonna do Guerilla marketing? Are you going to focus on like flyers and events and things like that? What's the plan?
Because I have seen many, many haunts once again home or pro die on the vine because nobody knew the funk about them.
I mean like one of the things that was so weird for us, like we talked about the revelation, the haunt that was open for all of two weeks here in the city, we found out about it, Not through a commercial, not through a flyer.
We found out about it when we checked to make sure that our haunt was listed correctly in the newspaper.
[46:59] That is not how you want people to find out about your odd and there's a reason only eight people showed up that night.
[47:07] So yeah, bad or too too little or bad marketing will tank a haunt very, very quickly.
So how are you going to handle the marketing? What are you going to do?
Um How are you gonna get your name out there and establish yourself and establish your brand?
Because this goes back to the unique selling point. This goes back to the other questions we were having people ask now that you should know what your unique selling point is that will guide your marketing. But now you've got to think about the brass tacks. Where's the money going? How are you doing it?
I like I said I've seen haunts with absolutely terrible ideas. I knew one haunt this was going to date me very, very badly in about five seconds here.
But their whole marketing budget I shipped you not was based upon my space. Marketing.
Yeah. He blew his entire marketing budget. Other than I think some flyers um on a digital campaign on my space.
Um Yeah, I'm old.
[48:04] But I am not marketing on my space and being successful because of it all.
[48:10] I'm not quite that old, you dig it.
So it's like yeah, it did not work, it was an abject fucking failure and if he had told me about it before he eat it all the money at it, I would have been, I smacked him around for even having the idea, he gets the pimp.
Yeah. For more tips on marketing by the way, you can go to episode 35 per guerilla marketing episode 82 for questions that you need to ask yourself about marketing.
And then we also interviewed um Alex Berlin. Yes, excellent episode.
Yes, and that was episode 2 83 Alex who is currently in the city.
Yeah, we've been we've seen him once and we're hoping to see him again very soon because he's hanging out in new Orleans for a while and doing his thing here.
Wish him well. I hope Alex you're listening to this. Hope the new Orleans is treating you right.
Uh But yeah, marketing is such a tricky thing and it's so easily overlooked. You need to be thinking about this once again before the first screw goes in before your first expenditure because hey, budget, you've got a budget for this ship.
[49:17] And also, you know, you need to know the direction of this just because you're going to start work on the marketing way sooner than you probably think from a timeline perspective, I'll put it like this, if you're,
opening a haunted october this year and you're not already working on your marketing and we're in, you know, it's sides of april, pretty much when we're recording this.
If you're not already working on it, you're behind your way the fun behind Actually, Yeah, if you're not already recruiting for a first time, haunt your Behind your behind.
[49:47] Honestly, if you're seeing this and you're listening to this episode, I'm going to start a haunt and it's not just a small pro haunt that you yourself can handle.
I mean, small home haunting rather, and my advice honestly, is wait till next year start getting your ducks in a row, start work, but plan on opening next year.
[50:06] Trust me. I've seen so many haunts die because they did not allow themselves adequate time.
Not none of runway to get going. And yeah, don't don't make that mistake.
Don't be ambitious. Don't try to open a haunt 2022. If you're trying to go pro and go big now, um do a home haunt, Do something small, do something that's actually within the means of these next six months or so.
And don't staff around with a full but also, you know, eventually you will want to open.
Um and so you have to stop the planning and and just do it eventually.
If you never do it, then you're never opened. And and do remember that no plan survives contact with the enemy.
As the saying goes, that's very true here too. And number nine, we're wrapping it up now.
What's the back story and theme of your haunt?
Yeah. We we've talked about the backstory thing. We've harped on a lot marketing and backstory are things we harp on all the time because there are things were a passionate about and be things we do as part of our day jobs, writing marketing.
These are things that we do as part of our day job and have a decent handle on at the very least.
Yeah. What is the backstory and the theme for your hunting? Going to be what story are you trying to tell? This ties back into the U. S. P.
[51:25] Because that that unique selling point of your haunt is going to be the center upon which everything rotates.
Your marketing is going to stem from it. Your backstory is gonna stem from it, your market. And literally everything that we talked about here is going to stem from that one way or another. Your location is gonna be hinging upon that.
Uh So yeah, what you need to do is be thinking about your backstory in conjunction with that USP.
So the idea is when um,
when you do go pro, when you do open or whatever is,
you already have something that the customers have sank their teeth into and hopefully understand and can tie in because most people's first exposure to your haunted attraction Once again, Home Hunter Pro haunt,
is going to be your website and your backstory.
Yeah, that's literally the first thing people are gonna see and so if it's good, it can sell a lot of tickets and it can make your haunt better for pretty much free because it doesn't cost you money to write a backstory.
Exactly. This is one thing you don't got a budget unless you're hiring a writer to do and then you've got a budget for it.
But let's find someone else to do it. Then you gotta budget, but.
[52:40] But it's pretty much free, it's the first exposure and the first thing people are going to see about your haunt other than like the flyer other than whatever the marketing is to get them to check out your haunt.
Um, and yeah, it's important. And the thing about it is we've seen this so many times, People open haunts, they have no backstory, no theme, no theme is we're blah, blah, blah, haunt weekly But what does that mean?
I if I don't know ship about you and your haunt, what should that mean to me?
What can it mean to me nothing. It can't mean a damn thing because you haven't told me a story.
You haven't given me a theme, you haven't given me,
anything to associate with what we have, the carnival theme, the traveling sideshow, circus style theme that we use, because I've always been fascinated with side shows and we have,
um, you know, Bernie Baxter based upon new Orleans history, fictional stories based upon the very real history of a city that has had its more than its share of funked up things happen.
Exactly, It's pretty easy to do.
So basically be thinking about this now because once again, it's all going to hinge on that USP, but having a backstory lined up before you start putting paint on the wall before you start building anything makes it so much easier and gives you a direction to take everything in.
Yeah. And I would also, you know, if you.
[54:06] I would plan out the first couple of years at least.
[54:12] I would too. Um Absolutely, that's a great idea.
Alright, but that's all we have, that's the nine questions to ask yourself before starting a haunt their tons more. This is just nine that often get overlooked and the backstory one gets overlooked so quickly and the website one gets overlooked so easily.
People don't think oh yeah, I need a website. It's not enough just to build a haunt and put it up in a building somewhere, I need a website and it presents well, okay, you know um how are you going to do it?
And facebook is not a website. No, it is not, it's a thing that you can connect to your website but it's not a website and it is honestly very important.
I find it very interesting that the haunted attraction industry is so married to facebook but that seems to be where the customers are. So I can't object to it now that that may eventually change though.
Oh yeah, and and you're gonna need your tiktok, you're gonna need your insta so you're gonna need that type of stuff too.
But yeah, it's it's crazy that the haunted attraction industry is still so tied to facebook and it seems to be where the customers are. So I can't criticize it.
[55:23] Well on that note everyone, thank you very much for joining us for the past hours.
We ramble on about nine questions to ask yourself before you open a haunt weekly please please do take a minute Check us out at all the places we are.
We're haunt weekly dot com. haunt weekly on twitter, haunt weekly on facebook and youtube dot com slash haunt weekly Also wherever you get your podcasts from were there, I guarantee you were stalking you talking to you in particular.
Dave Now, I don't know if anyone named Dave is even listening, but there there is someone named Dave listening, he's probably freaked out, Probably not,
but until next time I'm jonathan and this has been haunt weekly episode 3333 threes.
Talking about questions to ask for opening a haunt weekly See you all next week we will probably answer one of the great questions we got in last week's Question of the week. We'll see you all then.
