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How do you stand out in a brutally crowded market of nineteen competing adventure parks? You throw out the corporate playbook, buy a drop-fog machine, and lean heavily into aggressive guerrilla marketing.
In this episode of the FEC Masterminds Podcast, Clint Novak and Erik Stottlemyer sit down with fellow mastermind member Ed, who is fresh off closing on his third family entertainment venue in Minnesota.
Ed takes us behind the scenes of his 36-year journey in the amusement industry—starting from his early days as a roller rink DJ (where he was once fired and rehired by a different manager) to managing a rapid expansion across three vastly different venues: Zero Gravity (an indoor adventure park), Summerland (a seasonal 9-acre outdoor park), and his newest acquisition, The Fun Lab (a full-scale FEC).
Key Takeaways From This Episode:
The Turnaround Playbook: Why Ed views his venues as "reclamation projects" and the hard sacrifices required to pull off a successful business turnaround.
The "Bring Your Own Food" Birthday Model: How cutting out pizza delivery pain points and letting parents bring in their own Costco or Little Caesars food allowed Zero Gravity to boost party capacity by 30% to 40%.
WrestleMania-Style Birthdays: How Ed built an interactive Northern Lights party room with custom printed wall graphics and a ceiling-mounted down-shooting fog machine for under $4,000.
The Pixel Floor Phenomenon: Ed’s experience as an early adopter of the operator-free Pixel Game Floor (by Laser Force), why it instantly paid for itself, and why he’s ripping out VR to install another one at his new location.
Cross-Pollinating 100+ Employees: How Ed structures management and teams across a 75-mile geographical spread.
The Radius Marketing Wave: How Ed and other mastermind members are achieving 6x to 8x ad spend returns on Meta and Google Ads using Radius.
Plus, we talk about why roller rink operators make some of the best guerrilla marketers, the absolute power of close-knit mastermind networks, and the reality of living on "weenie water soup and ramen noodles" during a major business growth phase.
Novak Amusement Solutions (Clint Novak):https://www.novakamusementsolutions.com/
Adventure Park USA (Erik Stottlemyer):https://adventureparkusa.com/
Zero Gravity Adventure Park (Ed):https://www.zerogravitymn.com/
The Fun Lab (Ed):https://thefunlabmn.com/
YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqjhH0o01j-QOfYaL_4xrxA
Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/2klCyxlYbcGKFxdOQx15DV
Apple Podcasts:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fec-masterminds-podcast/id1895404878
Are you an FEC owner looking to step up your operations, swap "gold nuggets" with other operators, and scale your business? Apply to join our off-the-air Mastermind calls by visiting Novak Amusement Solutions today!
