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

Have you ever heard the phrase, “kill your darlings”? I hadn’t until this year.

To me, as a business owner, my “darlings” are the business-related things that I love the most-- and hold onto selfishly or against logic because of my emotional attachment to them

On paper, it can seem black-and-white. This service is profitable, so we will keep doing it. And if this other offering is much less profitable-- then we should cut it.

However, in the real world, it rarely works out that way. I’ll give...

AN ALTERNATIVE TITLE, “DO YOU EVER SLEEP??”
SECOND ALTERNATIVE TITLE, “HOW DO YOU DO IT ALL?”

As I have mentioned in previous blogs, life as a business owner looks significantly different from when we first opened our doors four years ago. While I still retain some responsibilities, like communicating with party clients, there are many tasks I used to keep on my “plate” that I have since outsourced, like working parties and events, and things I gave up altogether, like stalking the weather and w...

So you want to open an indoor playground business. Or, maybe you just have a pinterest board called “play cafe inspo”, or “business ideas”. Wherever you are in your journey, I’d venture to guess that you’ve pictured what life might be like if you actually moved forward with your plan and chased your dream.

However, you’re also probably overwhelmed with the idea of getting started and you’re probably nervous about not getting the funding you need, not getting the support you want from family and...

If you are considering opening an indoor playground or if you own one already, it is your job as the visionary and the owner of the business to think about the big picture ideas and initiatives and really perfect the revenue streams in your business.

But what happens when you make a decision that doesn’t pan out?

Let’s say you had a great idea for a service offering, or a class, or an event that you were REALLY excited about. You spent tons of time creating it, promoting it, and executing it.

Since I opened the doors to my indoor playground in 2015, I have had thousands of prospective owners reach out to me asking to “take a quick look” at their business plan. Now, not all of them have gone as in-depth as I did when creating a business plan, but most business plans are major documents that take a great deal of time to review.

And because you can now get MY eyes on YOUR business plan for a fraction of what a 1:1 consult would be if you upgrade your business plan toolkit purchase, ...

If you've been keeping up with my weekly blogs or watching me over on YouTube for a while, you know that I tend to talk about opening a profitable indoor playground-- my recommendations based on what we did right and what we did wrong with own business. 

Today, I really wanna take a step back and share a little bit about why I create this content and began Play Cafe Academy. (My paid program where I teach people step-by-step how to open an indoor playground and also hold their hand through t...

At Climbing Vines Cafe & Play, we offer a variety of services from classes and camps to open-play and private events. It’s our adult and child-friendly birthday parties, though, that we have chosen as our focus.

While we, of course, put time and resources towards making each aspect of our business the best it can be, I have found that having one primary focus helps us best serve our customers. Having one top priority has also helped our indoor playground stand out against our local competiti...

SECRETS OF A OPERATING A PROFITABLE INDOOR PLAYGROUND

One of the most common questions I get from my students inside Play Cafe Academy and from prospective owners inside my inbox is: how do we make money? So, variations of this question might be, What are our revenue streams? How do they compare to one another? Is there a “right” model to make the most money when operating an indoor playground or play cafe?

And my answer, for my business, is simple. We focus on parties. That is where the ma...

After helping hundreds of indoor playground owners and prospective owners get their businesses up and running, I have noticed that the funding phase can be the most difficult part of the process. In fact, of the prospective owners I have worked with that did NOT end up making it to the finish line, most have cited insufficient funding as their reason for halting progress on their plans.

While insufficient funding can certainly be a very real issue you face on this journey, I would like to encou...