Business, Marketing, and Life Advice for Play-Based Business Owners

Well, it’s January– often thought of as the month of self-improvement and renewal. But something I have also noticed is that a lot of indoor playground and play cafe business owners are also giving their spaces upgrades as well.

And this made me think of a strategy we employed in year 2 of our business when we wanted to do the same.

(And by the way-- if you're a podcast fan like myself, you can listen to this information on my Profitable Play Podcast linked here instead of reading! Just sayin'...

I often talk on my Profitable Play Podcast and on my YouTube channel about Instagram, Facebook, and Google Ads. After all, they’re some of the easiest and most common ways for small businesses like indoor playgrounds to get their products and services in front of their ideal local customers in a way that’s much more cost-effective than something like printed direct mailers. 

Plus, these ad platforms give us data we can use to measure our results and make data-driven, informed decisions about if...

On my Play Cafe Academy Youtube channel as well as back on episode 149 of my Profitable Play podcast I talked about how to price for your services– and specifically classes and events.

And after I published that content, I got a really great question that I wanted to address.

The question was regarding when we should consider CANCELING an event or a class based on low registration numbers.

Because in the example I gave, one of the assumptions I made in order to share my calculations was that ...

I know it’s the week after new years and as Larry David (any Curb Your Enthusiasm fans out there?!) once said, you can’t say happy new years after January 7th– but even though it’s January 9th I wanted to put this episode out there to give you some inspiration if you are STILL in need of a business resolution for 2023.

Now in Play Maker Society we talked a lot about our words of the year.

In the past my words have been No (my year of boundaries), Steady (my year of consistency), Grow (my year ...

So often I get questions on my Youtube Channel or in my Instagram messages saying, “hey Michele, I am thinking about offering X— what would you charge for this?”

And the latest example of this was on my youtube channel on my 2023 Indoor Playground Business Trends video, so shout out to Elizabeth for being the inspiration behind this episode. And PLEASE– read this one until the end. There are some really key takeaways I need you to hear and we are going to wrap this all up with a neat little bow...

As you are reading this I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season with your families and staying safe and warm! 

(And if you prefer to listen, you can get this same information anywhere you listen to podcasts on episode 146 of my Profitable Play podcast!).

As you may know I am in Buffalo, New York and we certainly got our fair share of wind and snow and while this holiday looked a lot different than expected since we were unable to travel and spend Christmas with our families, my husban...

If you follow me on YouTube you likely saw that this past week I interviewed Tiffany from MY Play Cafe and we talked about one of the most widely agreed upon tactics for profitable events amongst indoor playground owners- having kids’ favorite characters attend events.

But even if you watched that video, I wanted to take a moment to share my 3 biggest takeaways from my conversation with Tiffany. I want to share the 3 little nuggets of knowledge you may have missed if you were distracted or mult...

Now I want to give a little disclaimer before we get into this article. And by the way, if you prefer to listen instead of read, I have this article published as a podcast episode on my Profitable Play Podcast here.

If you are one of those indoor playground owners who made it through the pandemic, then hats off to you. This will likely all be a bit of a review– and may even give you a lil’ bit of business PTSD– so you may want to skip this one unless you want some tidying up tips. But this will...

In this article I want to explain more about about ICA’s–or “Ideal Customer Avatars”-- and why you might have MULTIPLE ICA’s in your business– and why that’s OK.

Now if you have read any of the business books I’ve mentioned on this podcast, including Building a StoryBrand by Donald miller which we read together in a 5-part series starting back on episode 114 of my Profitable Play podcast– you should already be intimately familiar with the concept of the ideal customer.

But just as a quick revi...

As you likely know, we are right in the middle of the whole black Friday, small business Saturday, cyber Monday sale madness at the moment. 

I talked in last week’s Profitable Play Podcast episodes about sales I recommend business owners take advantage of for themselves and their businesses and also gave some unique ideas for sales that have been successful for my indoor playground in the past. 

But in this article (and in this episode if you prefer to listen!), I want to address something tha...