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

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 ...

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...

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...

Something I try to do is follow as many play spaces as possible on social media. And this is for a few different reasons. 

I love to show support, especially the places inside of my Play Maker Society program where we all try to follow each other's accounts and engage regardless, but I also like to stay up-to-date on the trends of the industry, as you might expect. 

It was a bit overwhelming to do so when I owned my own space, so if that sounds exhausting to you– it’s OK, that’s totally normal...

In this article (which is a reader-friendly version of my Profitable Play Podcast episode 131 which you can listen to here), I am going to quickly share three things I loved about my recent visit to Cafe O Play in November 2022! Now, I could truly list dozens of other things– but I want to keep it simple so that you can walk away from reading this with actionable takeaways you can implement in your own indoor playground, play cafe, or family entertainment center!

This was an extra special visit...

Psst.. would you rather listen to this as a podcast episode? Click here!

Determining the hours of your indoor playground is a business decision that you want to take the time to evaluate and prioritize, especially before presenting the hours to your community. 

The hours that you agree upon will impact how many people find you for open play, how many parties you book, and what your emphasis is going to be in terms of how you're going to actually make your money, which all have big implications...

According to HubSpot, 90% of consumers reported reading or at least glancing at online reviews before visiting a business. Furthermore, 88% of consumers will trust online reviews on Google or social media, as much as a referral or recommendation from a trusted friend, family member, or coworker.

This is what makes the topic of online reviews and how they impact your sales so important. When you've worked hard to get a glowing five-star review, it’s crucial to understand how to maximize it as mu...

It was recently estimated by the CDC that over 5.4 MILLION adults in the United States  (2.21% of American adults) have ASD.  The states with the greatest estimated number of adults living with ASD included California (701,669), Texas (449,631), New York (342,280), and Florida (329,131). And similarly, the nationally representative survey suggests that about 1.5 million U.S. kids have autism, or about 1 in 40.

To put it in perspective, most indoor playgrounds serve between 25 and 200 kids per d...

One of the biggest reservations I hear from play space owners who are nervous to install a full cafe in their space is,

“well, I can’t afford to hire additional staff a cafe would require..."

If you haven’t listened to episode 55 of my podcast yet, go back and listen to it because I break down this objection in painstaking detail, but today I want to share two ways with you that you use to dispel this fear even further.

And just to recap ONE point from episode 55 in case you missed it, b...