Marty Parker

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Chapter 1: Introduction to Marty Parker's Journey

[0:00] Hey everyone, on today's episode of Attractions Insides, we are talking with one of the most inventive creators in

[0:07] our industry, Marty Parker. After building everything from mud runs to zombie escape rooms in 14 different

[0:14] cities, Marty is now redefining couples getaways with three fully themed romantic adventure mansions across Ohio and Illinois. These aren't hotel rooms.

[0:25] They are multi-room mystery mansions filled with the secret passages, hidden tunnels, luxury spy experiences, and interactive puzzles designed for two.

[0:34] Today, we diving into how Marty turns wild ideas into scalable attractions.

[0:39] What goes into building this immersive romantic estates and why this concept is exploding with the demand. Let's jump in. Marty, welcome.

[0:48] Hey, thank you, Demetri. Thanks for having us on. Always great to see you again. That's for sure. And I'm excited to be here. Marty, how does a stock

[0:55] trader end up building mud runs, bubble runs, escape rooms, and now romantic adventure mentions? You know, I came out

[1:02] from I was a trader for about 12 11 12 years. And it was I didn't know it at the time, but I had ADHD, so I was able to read the ticker just coming across.

[1:12] It was just pure reading the ticker like this boop boop boop for years. It was a lot of fun. It was very lucrative business and just I didn't I couldn't even explain how I did it, but I was

[1:20] able to do it. Then uh my last five years I became a computer programmer. I work with computer programmers to program what I was spitting out in my head and eventually all the programs out

[1:29] there as these MIT grads overcame what we were able to produce and and someone yanked our servers. We saw how we got we

[1:37] got our servers yanked. We had a one tenth of a second difference than everyone else. And when that happened everything crushed in and then it was oh we had all these payments to keep making

[1:46] to keep the team going and we had to fold up shop within about two years. We were like, and we just couldn't keep it going. So, I saw an article out there

[1:53] about Warrior Dash, how in one weekend in southern Ohio, they had what was it 20,000 people at $72 a ticket. 20,000

[2:01] people. $72 a ticket to do a like two, three hour mud run in someone's backyard. Just so happens I grew up in

[2:08] southern Ohio and I had a my family had a farm. I called up my dad and literally next day I saw the article. Hey dad, just out of curiosity, could we have

[2:15] some people over this year and uh throw some water and and some pits and have a band, drink beer and play in the mud, do a little run. He said yes. And that began a production. I'm becoming a

[2:24] producer of what turned out to be something then then they were called Mob Events. Now they're called it's active entertainment is what it was. So it came

[2:32] out of my entire career slowly dwindled over two years by getting replaced by computers and logorithms. And then I had

[2:40] to find something else to do. I saw an article took week. I woke up the next day and I bought the domain Mud Ninja.

[2:46] I'm like, wouldn't it be great? Mud ninja. Boom. And Mud Ninja became this icon for a good 11 years all the way up in into the co years still.

[2:54] Wow. So, what moment have you realized that corporate life wasn't for you?

[2:58] I would have kept doing that. I was a entrepreneur and a business person. Had I kept going, I would have done it. It was the most perfect fit. I'd get in a zone. You know how you get into zones

Chapter 2: From Stock Trading to Creative Ventures

[3:06] when you're in your business? And I do it now. I'll get in my zone for maybe like five, six hours a day. You're in your zone. No, you're so focused. When I

[3:13] was a trader, I was in my zone. It's hard to find. I think it's hard to find if you find a job, a career or something. So, I would have kept going had I not been forced out of it due through attrition, everything we tried.

[3:23] And um through that, a big lesson was well, why don't you diversify into other trading strategies and we did. I had four or five others, but not enough to make it to make it like it should have

[3:32] been. So, that's how we I left that um business and we started I started the next business.

[3:37] Nice. Okay. Let me ask you where does your constant creativity comes from?

[3:41] It's going to be and I didn't know it and I always thought oh I'm just generally creative. I'm not. I don't think I'm generally creative just by generally creative. The creativity is a

[3:49] byproduct of having five thoughts at one time organically and I can't help it.

[3:54] Right now I have five thoughts going on and that's just not enough dopamine in my system and it's how I was born. So there is no magic button I can say hey

[4:01] be creative. I'm not trying to be creative. I literally have five thoughts going on at once. To focus in on one, that's when you're in the zone and that's where it becomes really powerful.

[4:10] But to do anything in life, it's really just difficult to have a conversation, to have friends, to even go grocery shopping. There's all these things happening. So, it's just a byproduct of

[4:17] having five thoughts because I can't get a shot of dopamine for for finishing a thought.

[4:22] What was the first wild idea you ever built?

[4:25] First wild idea that I ever built. You know, I was a trader. I came up with this idea called a life learning device.

[4:30] Oh, here's one. I just think about it's off. I built this product. It's got dust on it. This product is called secrets of life and words of wisdom. You would put it on your table and I was big in always

[4:38] been big into motivation and passing it on. Like how could I teach my kids one little thing a day that with one mantra could change their lives. I did research

[4:46] took all the top 10 top hundreds and thousands of things that people would say throughout history and I put them on this device and you hit this button and

[4:54] it's got dust on it and it would physically speak to you one quote a day, one tidbit a day and every day I'd give you a new one. So, at the kitchen table,

[5:02] I'd hit that button, boop, and it would give us words of wisdom and secrets of life. So, that was just ridiculously crazy and awesome. And it was about a

[5:09] year-long project to do that. And I discovered a retail value of 4 to1. When you build a retail product, the original cost, you have to sell in retail four

[5:17] times that because the wholesaler in there that you've got to go and they've got to make their markup. So, eventually that product ju I couldn't make it for the cost. And now you have apps on your

[5:25] phone, but it still doesn't have that one singular thing. That's a habit that's on your table. And that's where it does come about value. But anyway, that was a crazy idea. Life learning devices.

[5:33] Interesting. By creating larger scale events, what did you learn about scalability?

[5:38] Oh my goodness. There there's so many mantras that I keep adopting. I keep looking for new mantras that like, man, how can I make my life easier and how can I enjoy more? And I really wake up happy every single day. It's ridiculous.

[5:48] My wife's just tired of me being happy all the time. And because everything that comes at me is, oh, that's a challenge. But yet, challenge means money. Challenge means freedom.

[5:56] Challenge means opportunity. Cons means all these different things. When when you look at something and when you're searching for a hit of dopamine, when

Chapter 3: The Source of Creativity and Wild Ideas

[6:04] you're searching for, oh, I want to get excited. I get excited about building one of my houses now or building a zombie room or building a mud run or building these things. But actually

[6:12] managing it, I would never get excited because I'm like, well, that's no fun.

[6:15] I'm not creating something new. I'm getting something done. So then you got to figure out where how for me, how do I scale? So the question was because I get a great feeling from scaling. Yeah,

[6:23] there's money there and all these things. So I had to start studying scaling. So asking how I learned to scale was from doing it. But before I

[6:32] did it, like all of my great successes, all everything I do in life, I learned this when I was a trader. I sat down beside Carlos Griffin. He spoke Spanish.

[6:38] I happened to speak Spanish. And he just told me what to do. In two weeks, he taught me how to trade. That was it. I mean, I didn't have to figure it out.

[6:44] When I started mud runs, I met Ding Dren. He had the number one mud run in the country. I literally went to his events and volunteered for free. When I

[6:52] did the bubble run, I went to the bubble run. Mine was called Bubble Palooa. And I volunteered for free and I asked the owners hey how'd you do this and Dean

[7:00] would tell me how he scaled and then we became great friends over the years and we talked to each other hey how are we scaling and scaling is actually science it's a business industry we sp I spend

[7:09] so much time documenting our systems so we can scale and I keep thinking about scaling because if you think about how many actions as an entrepreneur you have

[7:16] in a day to get your most output how many actions you have to take to get that output and then you ask yourself well which are the actions that are

[7:23] going to get me the most value out of that output so that I do less and make more money or add more value. It's the same do less add more value and that is

[7:30] scaling. I study it to the ath degree. I think about it all the time and I get excited when I know that everything in my life every everyone that life that I

[7:39] touch through my kids through my children if I can go and have a massive action from that one hitting the button like that life learning device button on

[7:47] there you boom can change everything study that and that's what I do. So I study it. So the answer directly is I do it by failing massively like oh let me

[7:55] try to scale but then I find other people that are scaling simply say how are you doing it what could I what value could I give you so you can tell me how to scale and I've been doing that for

[8:03] years I I will still do it today I'm like man how are they doing that well hey can I wash your car and you show me how you can get three of those instead of can you share any hilarious or

[8:11] disastrous like event stories I've got so many like like trapped in a room of the zombie we were open up the London location and we had our first

[8:18] beta test and it's in a museum like an old mall museum museum type thing. And we didn't know this, but the law, the fire coding is different in London. We

[8:25] have the escape room beta testing. We hired a few actors out of it. And we're on the third floor and all the doors lock. There are no elevators. Every

[8:33] single door to get off this third floor and it's 9:30, 10:00 at night. We're ready to go out like and we have to yell down to random strangers in the street

[8:42] hoping that we can throw the keys down and someone comes up to allow us out of an escape room, right? We are literally trapped. Third floor escape room. And I

Chapter 4: Scaling and Learning from Experience

[8:50] found that just the story was hysterical. Another story that's disastrous, mud runs. So I learned by the 8, nth year doing these mud runs in a partner with my brother and he took it

[8:59] over and I'm like, man, I learned not to drive by the med tent where people go to if they get hurt on the race. Well, one

[9:07] year, it was probably a third year in, it rained. And when it rains and you're in Ohio valleys and there's rocks everywhere, that line to the medical

[9:14] tent is stacked 50 people deep. Well, as I get there, everyone's looking at this one guy coming out of the forest and I don't look and I've learned not to drive by. I said, "Don't drive by it." I can

[9:22] see in my corner of my eye. I leave. And then I heard the story. We had one of our participants literally with his intestines in his hands walking because

[9:31] he slid off and and he hit one of these branches and opened up and he's holding his int and it was it was disastrous for me. But I learned not to walk by the the

[9:39] tent and and always constantly ask did you sign your waiver? Did you sign your waiver? Did you sign your waiver? So little fun disastrous moments. Where did the live zombie idea came from?

[9:48] I was on a drive doing a color palooa.

[9:50] Yep. It was the color. This is a color run. 5K color run. We throw up color. Uh oh. No, this was Sorry. This was a bubble run. We were doing a bubble run where you run through bubbles and color

[9:58] in Tampa, Florida. My wife had sent me an email from someone that said, "Hey, there's an escape room, this thing called escape room in California." And

[10:07] the year was 2012, something of that nature. 2011, 2011, 2012, 2012. And my friend said this, "I'm not going to do a tomato fight." used to produce tomato fights. Just get my not doing a mud run.

[10:18] I'm not going to do this color thing that you do. I don't want the bubbles.

[10:20] It's in my hair. But I would do this mine thing in this room. I'm like, "Okay, whatever." But then they had on their they could show you could see this from scrap way back then. They showed

[10:28] every ticket that they sold on their sales. Somehow the pro I could go back.

[10:32] I'm like, "Wait a minute. They're like selling out ridiculously." So, I immediately bought a ticket. That was on a Monday. I said, "Honey, we're going we're going to go visit Stacy in

[10:39] California." And I bought a ticket at 11:59 p.m. or something. like the last hour they had cuz they didn't have any.

[10:45] It's 11 o'clock. We got there Friday. We did the escape room. We went had some karaoke and ate sushi and we talked about this escape room thing. This is so

[10:53] much fun. This is so crazy fun. So, we're back home on Sunday. Monday, I'm on the I'm on the road. I'm driving a

[11:00] big trailer. Got my cousin Al. I said, "Okay, all right. Now, there's one thing I do in business is I don't want to invent anything. I don't want to create anything. I don't I don't want because

[11:08] it's like, oh, I got to fail and do all these I want to find a mentor and I want them to teach me or I want to just do something that is extremely popular. So

[11:16] popular that has a line. So before I start a business, I have so many golden rules, but the big one is is there a line for it already? So if there is a

[11:24] line, why not let's say you're at a carnival and there's a line that's selling lobster bowls, right? And the lines are always long. So why not I go

[11:33] out and start a lobster? Mine doesn't even have to taste good. It really doesn't. It doesn't even have to It can taste okay. doesn't have to be close is okay cuz people are going to jump out of

[11:41] that line, aren't they? And they're going to go to this other line getting this product that they may never see it yet. So, literally, I could just sell and then we' get half the business for

[11:48] that line. That being said, if I see a line for something, I know I'm going to open it. In 2012, 2013, in that era, do

Chapter 5: The Birth of the Zombie Escape Room

[11:56] you remember what the most popular TV show in the world was? Have no clue.

[12:01] It was hands down, you can Google this, The Walking Dead. Oh, yeah.

[12:05] So, I started there. All right. Where's their line? No one knows about this escape room thing. But they do know about the most popular TV shows. I don't do haunts. I don't like loud noise.

[12:15] Halloween does not excite me. Zombies.

[12:17] I'm never whatever. But I know one thing. There's a line for this culture.

[12:21] So now you can now I can Oh, I can write a Facebook ad. You ever want to be on The Walking Dead? Now you can. Let's house. Let's lock you in this room. So

[12:29] that's how it came about. It wasn't scary. I think it was like where's their line? Let me duplicate that line with this new thing. So I taxed the two.

[12:37] Brilliant. And that was my question like how why actors how did you come up with the zombie idea. So now you answer

[12:44] part of that though part of it was it's like okay you got a zombie in a room but then what he'd eat everyone but then then and I and I you know you're on to

[12:52] something good and I'll do this two or three times a week. When you start laughing and it is a belly laugh and organic laugh and I'm sitting there with my cousin Al. I'm like Al what Google

[13:00] what's the most popular TV show? Okay Walking Dead. All right. Well let's put a zombie in a room. All right we're driving. Oh, with the zombie div everyone. We got to stop him from

[13:08] meeting everyone right off the bat. Oh, let's put him on a chain. But then, yeah, let's make the chain release every 5 minutes. By the end of the show, he's able to reach everyone and everyone. Oh,

[13:16] this is so great. But how are we going to keep people safe? Because I've been doing mud runs. Well, we got to put a proctor in the show. All right. And it's a show. Now, at this point, this we got

[13:23] to understand. Escape rooms, there was one in the country. That's it. And no one knew what an escape room was. And people called it a puzzle, a puzzle

[13:30] quest. They all these names for it. And I'm like, "Okay, whatever." But if I add actors now, it's a theater piece. And I study theographic theater. Everything I

[13:38] do is a show. It's really a show. And if you're even if you're putting on a pickle match, it's still a show. You got the beginning, middle, end, right? We've been putting on shows on the farm with

[13:45] with rodeos and and quadrunner rodeos for years. And they were always shows.

[13:49] My dad, all right, we got a show this way. Okay, we got another show in house.

[13:52] We called it a show. Trapped in a room because you had professor von Gutenberg like this who talks like that. And you have Dr. Rox in the zombie. And we would

[13:59] hire professional actors that worked in Broadway shows. And they would come here and do this as their job that would pay them money because they named Warren

[14:07] tips on this thing. It was crazy. So we really labeled as a theater show. We did and at the time no one called it and I named mine wrong, you know, as the second escape room in the country. I

[14:15] called it escape room. What do I call it? Escape room.

[14:19] Room escapes. Yeah. Well, it was Trapped in Room Zombie was the name of the first show. Then I'm like, "Oh, this could be an industry." So instead of escape rooms, I called them room escapes. So

[14:27] the name of my country, Room Escape Adventures was the name of my country instead of escape room adventures. the escape rooms had the SEO and that's another trick you know you try to name

[14:34] your your website your company after uh after the name of what people are going to Google so we didn't even know the name of it that time so I labed it

[14:41] theater pieces for years and we used actors and actors and actors and it has a higher cost but at that point we didn't care I mean it was insane you

[14:49] guys know the escape room industry it was insane insane insane right and then what happened and then I wasn't ready or prepared for this because and truly if I

[14:57] brought that show out again today it's an amazing show and it's not an escape room. It's a It's a comedy piece trapped in rubble zone, but yes, you have to solve riddles and get out of here and do

[15:05] all these things, but it's funny. You have a character and at the at the end, we spend 10 minutes telling every single person what they did in the show and how it was funny and we we teach our actors

Chapter 6: Theater and Entertainment in Escape Rooms

[15:12] how to give it in a humorish uh type uh concept. It was on Michigan Avenue, right on Michigan Avenue, right there, seven years that thing. It's fun. Great

[15:20] show. It's probably one of the more things that I'm proud of. We ended up being in 22 locations, three different countries, uh with that theater piece.

[15:27] And we were on the Big Bang Theory. They put on the Big Bang Theory. That was just a that was a huge huge thing and it was all a byproduct of asking the same questions I ask now. Is there a line?

[15:36] Where is there a line? I am not going to open a business unless people are already paying for my product. All I'm going to do is create a blue ocean and kind of relabel it so people do this.

[15:45] They literally do this. And I won't open a business unless I can do this. If you can write an ad, Instagram ad, Facebook ad, any social media ad, that at the end

[15:53] of that ad, you yourself and everyone around you, they have their mouth open, they're with their right hand, they're reaching for the wall. If they are not

[16:01] reaching for the I'm not going to do the business, right? I'm literally not. And that's number one. Number two, I want to see other businesses that have the exact same thing that are already doing with a weight list. And now we're going to open

[16:10] it because I took their business. I wrote an ad where people are are reaching for the wallet. All right, let's the business.

[16:15] What was part of your success? Like how were you able to scale? You mentioned to 22 locations.

[16:21] Yeah. Uh and that was awesome. Right. So 14 we did in 12 months. And so it's more than one a month. And then I work with Dean again, right? And it's like Dean,

[16:29] how would you do this? I asked him. I studied everyone else. It's like the less you do, the more money you're going to make. And that's what it came down to. I'm like, all right, my goal is not

[16:38] to pick up a hammer. And I did it. So I hired someone for each individual piece.

[16:41] I hired Justin. He was our first actor and he was amazing, amazing guy. He'd go out to these cities and open them up.

[16:47] I'd hire someone to find the locations and that was mostly my job, but I I mean like Seattle, I never went to our Seattle location. We were open for two years. Never went there. Never went there. I just had someone off

[16:56] Craigslist. I paid them 50 bucks and they showed me the thing and I signed the lease and then we sent the team out and then we sent a shipping cart a cargo. If it's overseas, we send a cargo

[17:04] ship. But here in Columbus, Ohio, we had a guy that was just constantly making the sets over and everything. So everything was duplicatable. It was hit a button, you go to the printer, you get

[17:12] all your printouts. Someone books the tickets for everyone and usually it was the producer. I'd tell them and give them pay them enough to do it and and the shipment would arrive. They'd place

[17:20] their Craigslist ad for actors and they would be they would be there for 5 to three days and leave. That's it. Three to five days and leave. Now that means what? Now granted, these escape rooms

[17:28] came in a box, right? We're doing locks and everything. You got a zombie and a code. It was it was simple. It was not a massive three-month build, one month build. And to find the actors was always

[17:38] a challenging thing, right? You got you literally have two days to find the actors and you got time to comb through resumes. But if they cannot be there on

[17:45] that weekend, we can't hire you because we got to show you how to get in the building and act like a zombie. But we already do it so fast because we had systems. Then we had one other thing

[17:53] that a lot of people It's hard for a lot of people to get. It's hard for a lot of people to get. We're going to go back to that lobster. Ready? We're going to go lobster lobster bowl example. This right

Chapter 7: Strategies for Rapid Scaling

[18:02] here is really hard to swallow. playing with the food puns here, but we had now imagine there's a whole line right here of people just buying a delicious,

[18:10] amazing bowl of lobster soup. I see that I open up my lobster soup. What's mine taste like? Well, do I really care what it tastes like right now in this moment?

[18:19] If I sell $10,000 tonight and I and I just shut down my doors tomorrow and I'll never come back to the city and I go to another city and want to make another 10 grand, I really don't really

[18:27] care what it tastes like. So, as long as it's not hurting people, it doesn't taste that bad. So the mindset was and this is and for a lot of hot active entertainment and I adopted this mud

[18:35] runs, color runs, bubble runs, tomato fights, game shows, shape rooms, tax, right? Is there is fast money in a new concept if you still give people the

[18:43] basic brown bag and here's a loaf of bread instead of caviar, instead of orange juice, all these things for 1,200 bucks. Our first escape room 1,200 bucks. Third month made $60,000.

[18:54] Chicago, Michigan Avenue, right? And and you're kind of like, wait a minute. And it's addictive almost, right? So now I would get on this trend of going, "Wait

[19:01] a minute. If I give something that I wrote a Facebook ad that sounds so amazing that no one's ever seen before." Like can you imagine holding the first

[19:09] iPhone right now? You'd be like, "Well, that's not really much." But that's how I was. Our first escape rooms right now, they would look extremely copy. Except chapter zombies is still amazing. I mean, it's still you got a zombie.

[19:19] Doesn't matter about the riddles included. And you got actors. So I adopted this. Give them the worst things in the world because they never have seen it before, but there's still going

[19:27] to be the most amazing thing they've ever seen. Do it cheap. Do it fast. Do it scalable. A boatload, excuse me, boatloads of cash quickly. And that I

[19:35] did for years and years and years. And so the answer to scaling is like, "Oh, it looks like you do all these things really great." I'm like, "Yeah, but I already know like axe throwing. I had 12

[19:43] ax throwing locations quick, but I knew I was going to shut them down pretty quickly and then I was going to convert the other big restaurants into a restaurant throwing fee, right? So, and

[19:51] active entertainment is that not for all the long riding because right we still have an amazing escape rooms that people go to, right? Those are the ones that survive, but those are more of FEC's at

[20:00] this point, right? Not not true. I mean, there are standalone tons of standalone escape rooms. Very few standalone ax throwing um type of concepts. I do wish

[20:09] I would have kept all my escape rooms and invested bigger money in them. But then again, you got to look at your ROI.

[20:13] when I remember it was a $2 million uh rebuild and 2017 I looked at doing it to update and keep everything of all the

[20:22] locations and then I'm like well when am I going to get my return on that because there's still massive competitors and this before co hit like why don't I do something else and no one knew about axe

[20:30] throwing at the time there were two ax throwing locations in the United States and five in Canada in 2017 and then axe throwing went hog wild fast crazy right

[20:39] and it's so cheap to set up but because of that you go, it's going to dissolve and go away. So there there is that rub, especially with active entertainment. If

[20:47] it's a just a general active entertainment, if you ask someone that did an active entertainment concept and say, "Hey, what was the name of the location you did your first escape room

[20:55] in?" Well, I don't know, but it was a pirate theme. How often have you heard the answer to that? Right. The same type of thing. Now it's a little different because they have one in the community

[21:03] and when Christmas comes along, that's, you know, my family, we'll go probably do an escape room. It's a lot of fun and feel this thing and it will be around for years and years and years. But that's different than the quick money

[21:11] versus the long money. How do you validate ideas cheaply? So you you got a new idea. You already kind of mentioned it a little bit, but give us a little

Chapter 8: Validating Ideas and Handling Failures

[21:19] bit more like what's behind your thought process.

[21:21] Number one, it's already validated before I started 100%. I'm not I'm highly risk averse. I'm highly riskaverse when I was a trader on Wall Street. I'm not going to make the trade unless I know the percentages. That's

[21:29] that's how it was and it works. I'm like, why would I, you know, same thing.

[21:32] Why would I open a business if I know it's going to fail? And I will and I have failed before, right? But there's an answer to this. In most cases, I'm going to find a line. So step one,

[21:41] that's how I validated. I found a line before I started. Number two is I move so fast that I get feedback so I can change what I built. Perfect example.

[21:48] I'm bored with the what I'm doing now.

[21:50] And I started, oh, let me go ahead and and I had a change of mindset real quick. This is recent like a year ago. I I said, oh, I seen this concept. Let me I came up with a new concept, which was,

[21:59] hey, I'm going to make a museum. People walk in the museum and in the on the photos on the wall or the AI pictures of themselves, this big birthday party place. Oh my gosh, I love it. And it was, oh my god. And everyone wanted it.

[22:07] It had a whole bunch of lines. They prove had lines. I just couldn't produce the photos because people wouldn't send us their pictures. I forgot. Oh, okay.

[22:12] So, I failed. But I had everything built. So, I did this. I'm like, how fast can I fail? What else can I put in this thing? Well, three years ago, someone sent me something that I pulled

[22:20] up for my file. I'm like, dark making art in the dark. I came up with the art set. People were just doing things in the dark. I'm like, well, let's just make art. And it's and we use it today, right? So, that was about failing fast.

[22:30] So, the scalability concept for me and h how do you how do you do it really quick is number one, does it work or how do you validate was your question. It's

[22:38] validated because there's a line somewhere else. Number two, I know I'm going to have to fail fast. So, do everything cheap. Do everything cheap quickly. But if you do everything cheap

[22:45] slowly, it won't work. Everything cheap quickly. Well, how do you do that? Well, Russell Brunson would tell you. Russell Brunson said, just put a date on the calendar and no matter what, you're

[22:54] going to open on that date. And the date is ridiculous from now. You got one month. You got one month to build this entire project. Well, how? Don't worry about the how. You start selling tickets

[23:01] now and you'll figure out the rest of it. And in that process, you'll learn like, well, that didn't work. That didn't work. This kind of works. That didn't work. Well, give them this and see how it goes. And then the next day,

[23:09] you go back and rewrite it and give them this again. And you rewrite it again. I wrote, oh my gosh, I think it was nine times in one week. I rewrote something

[23:16] that I already sold tickets for for the Art in the Dark because it was horrible when it came out. And then I made it amazing within nine days cuz I had to. I

[23:24] had no option. The answer is crap fast, crap slow. You're going to fail. You got to build something. Don't put a whole

[23:32] bunch of money in it because you know it's not going to work anyway until you get feedback. So just throw a little bit out there but you know concept already works. We proven that now we don't know how to make go then put the data in and

[23:40] then change it change it change it today. Last time we opened the genie suite it's going to be amazing. It is amazing. After this phone call I'm calling the guests and for the next 14 days I'm going to call the guests and

[23:48] then I'm going to change everything in it. I'm going to change this. That's not true because I'm going to change a lot of things in it probably. I hope not you but all right change that change that.

[23:55] Then they told me oh the bathroom smells like okay I got to clean the bathroom and probably find a bug somewhere. Okay let's kill the box. Right. It's it literally no joke. It's pretty amazing

[24:03] what we gave him right now because I've I've gotten better at this whole validating and making it happen, but if you do not fail, not only that, you got

[24:10] to fail fast until you're failing last and then keep failing forever. That's it. And I tell my whole teams, guys, if we're not getting four star reviews,

Chapter 9: Emotional Resilience and Planning for Losses

[24:17] something's wrong here because you get five star reviews. We got to fail somewhere and we got to have a competitor and hopefully it's ourselves.

[24:23] So, so there and I just heard on a podcast about getting a four-st star review, how healthy that is. I'm like, "Oh, yeah, it is healthy." You know, it it keeps you growing, dude.

[24:31] If you do not grow, if you do not change your business, if you do not adapt, you will die. You will absolutely die. I've had businesses die before because I didn't change them. I didn't upgrade

[24:39] them. Right. But they were fast money uh grabs. I don't know how to tell them my phone. Okay. Put it on airplane mode.

[24:46] Yes. There's so many buttons. This is like No, I'm just going to slide it. I slid it. Okay.

[24:50] How do you Okay. How do you test new concepts without breaking the bank? And again, you already kind of answered it, but uh just go cheap and fail fast.

[24:59] Okay. How do you decide when to push hard or shut an idea down? I love it. And that it will be speed.

[25:06] Oh, so it's time, how much time goes by how many sales I get by how much money I put in my funnel. And typically, I don't want to put much money in my funnel. So,

[25:15] it's an ROI concept, right? A rorowaz if you will. So, I drop money in, I look at my rorowaz number, and I'm like, "Oh, but it's more than that." You look at

[25:22] your rorowaz number on a quick period of time. I want to be able to run a Facebook ad, put $50 behind it, and sell 40 tickets. That's ridiculous, but I

[25:30] want to, right? I've done that before, right? So, what if I go, all right, let me boost this and do this and do this.

[25:35] So, it's going to come down to always, what is the rorowaz over a quick period of time? How much money and time and energy am I spending in this whole thing? And that'll tell you, that'll tell me right there.

[25:44] Interesting. Next question. How do you emotionally handle losses?

[25:47] Oh, I already plan on losing before I go. I mean, before it starts, it was like, where's I'm in plan B all the time. Cleaners don't show up today.

[25:54] Well, that's all right. I call the guests. I tell them what happened.

[25:56] Cleaner got in a car wreck. I'm so sorry. clean or quit on me. I'm so sorry. Here's your money back. And I'm gonna give you a free night stay. Plus, I'm gonna give you behind the scene

[26:04] tour. What happened to you is so it's already planned. I already know it.

[26:07] Marty, they're gonna come in and shut this location down because the entire city got rid of Airbnbs. That would suck. I'm so sorry. I got these other two. Let's move over. Let's go sell the

[26:15] property and make a Right. So, every worst case scenario is what I'm living all the time after COVID especially, right? We all went through that and like

[26:23] whoop, okay, how do I plan for that in the future? And I think all of us have gotten a little bit more like, oh, plan for living plan B all the time. And I've got it's gotten to the point that I'm

[26:32] kind of annoying to be around that if you do not call me and you do not text me and you don't get back to me, I already know you're in the hospital. And if you're not in the hospital, then you

[26:39] lied to me. And that's not good because you said you'd be here at 9:00. You're not here at 9:00. They're in the hospital and I'm already making plans to either replace you or have someone come

[26:48] in today or move my entire schedule around. And if you tell me that, yeah, if you're not in the hospital and you didn't tell me you're there by 9ine, I'm already in living in plan B. And that's

Chapter 10: Surprising Successes and Future Aspirations

[26:56] a little annoying for a lot of people, but it's true. I mean, you kind of lied to me. You said be there at 9. I'm living in plan B. It's all okay. Why is it okay? Because I already know you

[27:04] will. And that comes from, let me tell you where that comes from. Going into a city and hiring off Craigslist 10 actors just to get one because we we thought,

[27:12] oh, we got an actor coming and they don't show, right? So, it's basically, let's just live in plan B and plan that everyone's going to lie to you. They

[27:19] don't want to, but they do, right? Of whatever reason. Or you're hiring from the poverty circle and it's just unrealistic. So, we live in plan B.

[27:26] Where's the stress in that? Unless you have to go to plan C, then it gets stressful, which sometimes you do. What is your biggest surprise success?

[27:33] Uh, I had no idea trapped in a room with zombie would be like it was. I did no idea that uh trading would work out like it did. Those were extreme. I think

[27:41] everything, it's funny, everything you you get this plan and it never ever goes to plan and then all of a sudden sometimes it goes better than plan. And both of those were better than than

[27:50] planned. Trading was much better than planned. Trapped in a room of zombies much better. Mud ninja was better than planned. That kept going on. And those are some of the the great ones. I did

[27:58] not know that the game show would last as long as it did. I had no idea. I had no idea that axe throwing would be as big as it was. So sometimes you get

[28:06] surprised. What you're not hearing about a ton of other failures that I've had in there and you're you'll think it goes well and it doesn't. Right. So again, it's a numbers game and fail fast.

[28:14] And so now my next question, what was your biggest flops? I did this thing when remember VR when VR was coming out, a virtual reality thing, and I got all

[28:22] excited. I got way too excited where I thought we could put an event on in the streets with a scavenger hunt, have people dress up in costumes and do this

[28:30] iPad thing where it would make this thing come on the screen by looking down. It was the coolest thing ever. It's the biggest flop I ever had.

[28:39] Biggest flop. Strategically, the massage chair bus tours worked and we sold out and but I didn't do and it's still still

[28:46] going today. I didn't do the numbers on machines. So whether you get at least a new machine and I didn't know I didn't

[28:54] drive around vehicles. Machine cost, driver operating cost is huge for active entertainment industry. And that was a huge lesson that is like wow that's a

[29:03] big excuse me big lesson that I did not know about that I wish I knew and I would have done it a little bit differently with I would have partnered with local operators that would have

[29:10] been better with the massage chair bus doors. Okay, now let's move to a new era, right? What inspired the romantic adventure mentions?

[29:18] Um, we're working on uh bubble trucks at the time. We had a bubble truck franchise and where these bubbles from CO dropped bubbles on people. I remember

[29:25] when soap used to kill Corona for like a hot two months and that was an amazing amazing fun time with these bubble trucks. We're building these bubble

[29:33] trucks. One of our business partner, a good friend of mine, Tom, he's he's telling me, "Marty, I've been trying to get book a hotel for my girlfriend and I for the last six months." Like, "What?

[29:42] You just can't get a book?" Ah, they're busy. I booked. I'm like, "Okay, whatever." Next day, Marty, I finally got I got one. I got I got it. I got You mean you booked it? Yeah, I booked it.

[29:50] Great. He goes, "I got it on a Monday night." I'm like, "Wait a No. Who wants to go to a hotel on a Monday night? You booked a hotel on a Monday night?" "Yeah, six months from now." What? Give

[29:58] me the name of the website, please. I stopped what I'm doing, right? I'm smelling a line. You see that line? I'm smelling it, right? Oh, there's a line right now. Then some, this is somewhere

Chapter 11: Lessons from Failures and Flops

[30:06] in COVID, coming out of COVID, and a lot of my friends and competitors and people I know were buying Airbnbs because it was illegal to travel and there was this

[30:13] pop in the Airbnb market. I'm like, man, I wish I would have grabbed some Airbnbs because the num numbers were phenomenal because you weren't allowed to leave the

[30:20] United States and and travel locally and it's co friendly. Oh, that would have been great. As soon as he said that there's this unique niche idea, I looked

[30:28] at it. And no joke, he's telling me on a Monday or probably a Tuesday he told me and then he booked on a Monday, six months in future. I research it and I'm

[30:36] like, "Wait a minute." And you can see their sales into the future, right? So I found the line and the name of the place was called Bellamir. He went to Sabaras

[30:44] was what he booked for. It's been around since for 25 years. They have like eight location. Bellamir has been around for 15 or 25 years. They've got two locations. And here's what I saw. I saw

[30:53] four suites. One suite was $780 a night, $800 a night, $400 a night, and $300 a night. And I'm like, "Wow, they're booked out, Demetri. They're booked out

[31:02] for six months straight." And I said, "Well, this is ridiculous. I don't understand. It has a swimming pool in their suite. Sounds rather boring to me, but I don't understand it. So, let me go

[31:10] check this out. Honey, I'm going to Is it all right?" You know, I go in the house and say, "Babe, can I go?" She's at work, so I call her tomorrow. It's all right if I drive up and check out.

[31:17] So, I drive up and I check out the Bar Bellamir in Toledo, Ohio. I get up there. They have four suites that are different kinds and they have eight of

[31:25] each of those. They have 32 suites on property that are sold out for the next six months. So now my line, my head is

[31:32] blown. There's a demand for people who want to swim in a pool that they no one else can see them. And I don't know what they do in the pool. I mean, I I still understand why people would do this, but

Chapter 12: Inspiration Behind Romantic Adventures

[31:40] people they do it. They do it. And I'm like, well, what if I built a luxury resort like theirs and I flip it on its

[31:48] head? So now now we have right we have a line. So now, how do we make it a blue ocean and make a Facebook ad and we make that Facebook read so that at the end of it, you're just dying to buy a ticket.

[31:58] So I sat down and I didn't have it all at first. I didn't even have it after I bought it because what I thought the Facebook ad would read instead of going

[32:06] to a public resort where the karaoke, the red light therapy, the yoga sessions, the dance floor, the massage

[32:13] chairs, the the luxury salt cape, all these things were public. What if they made them private in your own suite, hidden behind trap doors, secret passages and tunnels? And I thought, "Oh

[32:21] my gosh, that's like a Scooby-Doo mansion." So that was my Facebook ad.

[32:24] Went and got a house, tried it, and then two weeks before it opened. And we're still building it, right? You're rushing to try to get one open. Two weeks before we're building it, someone goes, "Marty,

[32:32] you built this secret passage. How's it going to open?" And I'm like, I got to I got to do the escape room thing and set up a riddle or clue. And I'm exhausted by this point, right? I've been doing

[32:40] escape rooms since 2012. And I mean, there's so many escape rooms. So many escape room. I'm just I'm so I'm like, escape room again. I am not calling this thing an escape room. I will not put in

[32:49] riddles and I have to put in riddles and clues just because I didn't figure I didn't think how you would open up all these secret passage. So I did okay

[32:57] let's write some riddles and we will not mention escape room on our website and we still I don't know if we do now or not. I'm still opposed to it because it's not it's a complete contrary.

[33:05] you're not we just use riddles and then we realized oh let's use challenges and we oh let's use these things and then we discovered from the demands of people more about the industry more about what

[33:14] the niche is more about how to market to more of our value how do we serve the people that's what I do every day what do I do I get up and I serve couples

[33:22] that are celebrating anniversary or love or being special or date night that's what I serve and by me understanding that and actually talking these guests I'm going to talk some guests as we're

[33:29] off this phone call even now about four years later I'm still talking to these guests going hey what would make it better what do you think I've had such great insight now that I can write the

[33:37] Facebook ad, but more importantly, we can build the events. We're building another second or third or second Indiana Jones suite in in Chicago. Oh, we just changed some ideas based on

[33:46] someone just said what they wanted to see right there. So, to answer your question how we got into it, we got into it from a COVID offspring. It was co, you know, at some point into code 2022.

[33:54] Someone mentioned, oh, we're working on a bubble truck. They mentioned there was a line. I'm like, that's ridiculous.

[33:58] There can't be a line for that. There was a line for that. Then I said, "Well, how can I write a Facebook ad that could be a little different because I don't want to put it? It's 60 to50 to $60,000

[34:07] to put a swimming pool inside of a suite. That's how much it costs." I'm like, "I don't want to do that." But I ended up spending the same. I mean, they're expensive to build what we build

[34:14] anyway. But and it's not big money what we make with these these little just Airbnbs, but they are um spun with a neat turn, but it's a lot of fun. It's a

[34:22] lot of fun and over a long haul, it should be around for a long long time.

[34:25] Do you blend romance, mystery, and luxury? Well, I think all of them minus the mystery maker, they kind of come in a nice little bow and a nice little

[34:33] packet as well. And um what I do is if I hire someone to go and they're working right now, they they have my top 10 competitors and I have competitors. I do

[34:40] I've got a number of ambiances, Sabaris, Bellamir and they go on and on and on and I really study the industry and some of them are overnight escape rooms now and for the last two years there were

[34:49] about about 15 of them about a year and a half ago. There's probably like 30 or 40 now overnight escape rooms. And so you blend it together based on what you

[34:57] already know that works. And right now there's a popular trend in glamping and pop trend and what's called overnight experential getaways or overnight experiences. So this a new industry that

[35:05] popped up. There's an article Wall Street Journal that we were in last year about oh what's this new industry and the industry is how do couples or anyone

[35:12] go spend the night somewhere and they just have an experience and you're going to see more and more of that where the competition is coming out of the word woodworks just like escape rooms and

[35:20] axes and the whole thing and it's there more now like we own laundry mats and like well how do we get clients come to our laundry match or come to our car wash it's just traditional businesses

[35:28] you build your CRM you build your list you got your hooks you stay in touch with the guests and then you market market is you know 80 90% of my time is

[35:37] not my time of my thought power and my focus is on marketing and then of course I have to build it all so that's kind of 80% of my time but we all know you got

[35:46] to sell your product so anyway I think that was a diluted answer what's the biggest engineering challenges you faced building it we had to figure a lot of things out and

[35:54] it was neat and a lot of fun it was not what you think so with escape rooms that are really really cool and amazing they use a lot of Hollywood effects they use

[36:02] a lot of Arduinos a lot a custom programming to make this and that happen. What if you use hypnosis? And that's what we use. We use a lot of hypnosis. We set up a script, a show.

[36:12] This whole thing's a show. And we get people to say yes and yes and yes before they come. We get then they get there, they say yes, and they're agreeing. So by them agreeing, we're able to build an

[36:20] environment that exists mostly in their mind, in their heads, because they have serotonin, oxytocins, endorphins, adrenaline running through their system.

[36:27] Combine it with music and the story line, the whole thing that we play down. We do not do the foam that you could do.

[36:33] But we do not really spend we do spend money, but we don't spend you could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get the same effect. We don't do that because we use I'm I'm not even going to

[36:41] call it storyline. I'm going to call it guest engagement through hypnosis.

[36:44] They're always hypnotized when they come in. They're hypnotized throughout the whole thing. And the technical side of that is really dull and boring. We can order off Amazon or go to Walmart and

[36:53] buy a button that you hit and it turns off the electric to a mag lock. It's not an Arduino. Just turns your lamp off in the house, right? The button. That's

[37:01] most of our props. But then you get creative with the storyline of how those are engaged by the guests. So we learned a lot doing that and everything we do is

[37:09] just now it's just mag locks and I try to stay away from anything high-tech. If I can't buy a prop for 100 bucks, we buy them all the time. You know the maglock props that here's a magnet goes up.

Chapter 13: Blending Romance, Mystery, and Luxury

[37:18] They're in there today. I just got a phone call. They're building out all those things. If it's too complicated that our team can't fix it and we got a few and I'm not I don't like them

[37:26] because they make you nervous because you got four hours to fix it and the guests are coming tonight. You have to write a workaround. So that's the extent of and then I learned a lot when you get building permits and stuff. I learned a

[37:34] lot about architecture. I mean you know if you build a building and how much you know fire coding and architecture learned a ton of those more than I did

[37:41] with the commercial side and you know with the residential home because you got a res. It's like what are the fire codes? What are what does it look like building these things out properly? That was a big lesson.

[37:50] What's the philosophy behind designing secret tunnels and interactive rooms?

[37:55] Russell Brunson did a study when and Russell does a ton of AB testing. He said, and it stuck with me. I'm like, okay, let me try that. And I I heard

[38:02] about I'm Russ listen to Russell so many times a week. He said he did a study.

[38:06] Um, if you look at most of his book, Secrets of Marketing, his podcast, Secrets of Marketing, right? The word secret automatically based on your me

[38:14] hearing it, you hear it through an entire acument of life. When you hear that, you go, "Oh, well, what is the secret? Do I need the secret? Do I need to know the secret?" There's this

[38:21] thought process. So, when you put secret in your Facebook ad, the thumb scroll stops. Do you want to learn the secret of? Hey. Hey, we were just exposed to the secret of my gosh, what is it?

[38:32] Right. So, that's the reason we put the word secret in there. Are they secret?

[38:36] Yeah. You walking around. So, the second part is there's a physiological thing that happens which means an immediate out of delayed an immediate uh shot of

Chapter 14: Engineering Challenges in Unique Experiences

[38:44] dopamine. Bam. And dopamine comes after you did a thing. And this is why escape rooms are extremely popular. You leave it a good escape room. You're full of dopamine, adrenaline, serotonin, and

[38:52] oxytocin. Right? So you get dopamine when you release something and something happens and that's the secret part like ah but if they knew and we work hard

[39:00] like dude if you go to escape room you look on the floor and you see floor marks you're like well that bookcase is going to open because there's a floor mark how many times that happened right like no dopamine or very little when

[39:08] you're like four two three point you look over it opens versus the gigantic mirror you've been standing at is seven feet in the air and there's no way you

[39:16] could possibly get into it pops open and you're like are you kidding me how in these robes that we're wearing are we going to get into All of a sudden, the

[39:23] bed opens up and the ladder shoots out and you're like, ah, right. So, there's, you know, I love coming up with like, wow, that's how we're going to get get the dopamine going.

[39:31] Do you build yourself or you outsource?

[39:33] My goal is to never ever hold a hammer in my house. So, if I hold a hammer, I'm losing money. And sometimes I lose money because I just didn't plan prop. I got to stay with I just don't want to do it.

[39:41] So, do we outsource? We hire contractors and I will take a video and tell them what I want. And if you get a good one, like right now, no joke, this morning I

[39:49] sent two videos, three videos to a build team up there that yesterday in Chicago I left saying, "Hey, can you build this thing? When water goes in here, it lifts

[39:56] up the maglock this way and that door over there open the door's not there.

[39:59] Can you build the door?" They'll come back. They'll get 70%. Now, this is this is how we talked about a couple things that work just for me. Just for me, they work for me. It was me. Go fast, fail fast, right? Get data and do it again.

[40:10] In that process, I see something in my mind. Demetri, if we were working together with a business partner, I'm going to tell you up front, I'm only going to tell you 70% of what I truly believe, what my vision is, and what I'm

[40:19] thinking. Are you okay with that? And you'll say, "Yeah." I say, "Okay." Now, I'm telling you, I'm not going to get all out because I just can't. And it's true. Like, I see something right now. I can't get out. So, I tell all my

[40:26] contractors, "Hey, I'm not." And they already know it. Then, they're going to bring me something. And is it what I asked them to draw? Absolutely not.

[40:32] Because I already knew that, right? So, what is it? I'm living in plan B before I hand any contractor my design. I'm not going to get what I want cuz not them.

[40:41] and this is what makes my life amazing.

[40:42] I don't blame them. I blame myself and I'm okay with that and I'll do it again and again and again because I will beat everyone else because I'm fast. Not beat everyone else in those terms. But it's

[40:50] like I will beat my fail rate if you will because what's my fail rate? I don't succeed. I'm going to, right?

[40:56] Because I'll just keep failing till I did, right? But but it's but I already know I'm going to fail. And when I hand them that and that's why I can hire contractors who can't even hold a

[41:04] hammer. No joke. because I have to cuz there's no one else around and I'm not picking up the hammer and I know they're going to give me a piece of crap back and I'm going to say thank you and here's your money and then I'm going to

[41:12] say listen can you now take this piece of crap and put the roof on like I asked you and I'll pay you again to do that and they're happy now say and check this

[41:20] out a lot of people go I'm not going to pay you because you didn't do this they leave you going to get to do this nobody because the next person's two days away

[41:27] I will suck that up I'll say I'm sorry I'll pat them on the back and I have them do it again while over here I'm going to do another one does it cost me more energy more time more effort yeah

[41:34] but Did I get it done quicker? And is it already in the budget? Right? So, I extend my budgets. I fail massively. I take all the blame in most cases, right?

[41:42] I'm like, "Ah, no worries. I'm sorry about that." In my head, I'm saying some cuss words probably. And I'm still going to keep them on. I'm still going to hire them unless they do an atrocious thing

[41:50] because I don't have time to wait two days to build trust. So, the second part is if I can trust them. If I can trust you and you're a horrible worker or like a mediocre worker, a horrible nail a

[41:59] mediocre worker and I trust you to be in the house and close it up, not steal and protect everyone and use good language and be the gentle person. Yeah, you're staying on. You don't have to be great.

[42:08] Just can I trust you? That's a big deal. Sorry.

[42:10] Yep. No, no, no. That's good. How do you maintain reliability across the complex spaces?

[42:15] How do I Oh, yeah. So, we have a system of checkboxes, right? And this is the most difficult thing in the business.

[42:21] And it's a secret. I like to say it's a secret. It's really not. We do it in escape rooms. Say you're going to reset escape room. Hoping the person doesn't do it by memory. I hope they have a box that they go, I set that. I set that.

[42:30] Like complex escape rooms, right? I set that. I set that. I set that. Great. So, so we have that in our suites. What happens is the cleaners go in and they

[42:37] think they know it and it's just so arous for them to hit these buttons. We're not paying you to clean the suite.

[42:42] We're not paying you to reset the riddles. We're paying you to check boxes authentically. That's the key. With your heart and soul, did you really put that riddle away? Oh, I didn't. But why is

[42:50] the box checked? I mean that that's only fair that you would check that after you. Oh, I'm so sorry. Right? And so you do that two or three times and the third

[42:58] time you say listen the third week our customer said this was open when they walked in. Is this still something you want to do? Is this a good fit for you?

[43:06] And then you wait to see what they say, right? And it's like, well, yeah. Yeah.

[43:10] We So, let's just do it. Just hit, you know, authentically do it and then check. Don't check the box because I'm not paying to clean the place. I'm paying you to check the box, which means you would have cleaned the place, right?

[43:19] That's one of our harder things. And I don't know what the question was anymore, but I think that's something that's always fun to talk about. That's fun.

[43:25] All right, let's uh move to some questions. Maybe you can help somebody.

[43:29] All right, with this answers like what's the fastest way uh what's the fastest way to validate a new concept?

[43:35] Do it number one. And look for a line number two. But here the way that you want to validate is use your past experiences with your with your marketing. So hey, you could have a

[43:44] great idea, right? and it could really work, but if you didn't market it with the right amount, well, what if it took you, hey, it's a great idea, but it took

[43:50] you $10,000 a week to market it to have success. That doesn't work, right? And oh, I only know over a long period of time. That's what you want to really get good at before you step on the pedal.

[43:59] It's like I've done a a similar event. I put a similar amount of money in in my marketing funnel and my rorowaz was two, three, four, five. You're like, that's

[44:07] when you really step on it. That's when you really validate it. But you got to get good at the marketing side on your own. not not just general marketing but what you know related to these events

[44:15] that if you ran this Facebook ad these four influencers and and this Instagram post and you got on the news you all these things it should have x result if

[44:23] it doesn't you're not validated you got to tweak something but I think the people in our industry we know right away because we're all good at looking

[44:31] here and go oh that excites me and getting people if we're not good at that don't build the event don't validate the event get good at how you're going to funnel it funnel all the clients in get

[44:40] good at how you're going to market the execution part. Hire someone for that.

[44:43] You know, oh, I'll hire someone for my marketing. You can do that. But if you can't if you if you cannot figure that part out, as long as they're good, but if you can't figure it out, woo buddy.

[44:52] Woo buddy. Because that's where you're you're bread and butter.

[44:54] So true. What's the What kind of advice can you give for owners feeling stuck creatively?

[45:00] Stuck creatively. Got it. So the thing right off the bat, whatever it is, whatever industry you're in, you take

[45:08] out your phones, you get your Tik Toks, you get your Tik Toks, you get your Instagrams, you get Facebooks, you get Snapchat, you get your searches, and you start searching. First, you go to Chat

[45:16] GBT. Type in the name of your business, ask them to show your 10 competitors, right? This is simple. This is this is real. I'm not making this up. This is

[45:24] from Gary Vee. Just did this. You get your top 10 competitors. Great. You go into Tik Tok and watch Tik Tok. go on

[45:31] Instagram and immediately search that, like it, make a comment. Search it, make a like, do all 10. Search, like, make a comment. And now you have trained your

[45:38] phone. You have trained your phone that while you're on, you're going to the bathroom or you're walking somewhere, you're in nature or wherever these people that people tell you to all get

[45:47] off your phone, you pull up your phone because you want to make money and you're stuck creatively and you hit Tik Tok. What's Tik Tok going to show you?

[45:53] They are going to show you the people that are already being creative in that industry that you had that question of how do I get creative about? They're

[46:01] doing it right. You're like, "Oh my gosh, that's my competitor and they just said these words and their ads. Boom.

[46:07] There's my creative idea." You didn't even do it. You chat to get your to get your top 10 competitors. Then you went to their then you went on all your social medias. You like them. Then you made a comment. Then you liked again.

[46:17] You make a comment. Why are you doing that? So you build your algorithm inside of this so that Tik Tok, Instagram, and Facebook, LinkedIn, you can use them are the people that are going to tell you

[46:25] how to be creative because they're going to show you your competitors how they're being creative. And now you're inspired.

[46:29] You're not copying. You're just inspired by that. You hire someone off Upwork to create the exact same ad to create the exact same thing. Or you tell your team,

[46:37] "Guys, that's what we're doing now." Why? Because and then you can dig it a step deeper and see if the ad work. We have a guy that's trying to he just

[46:43] built a AI agents define which of our competitor's top ads have the most engagement, most interaction so we can

[46:51] duplicate or be inspired by that ad of our competitor. And it's kind of a it's like a I don't know a little gold mine.

[46:57] It's like oh look at that. That one works. Or I could create ads if I want.

[47:00] Let me come up with an ad and maybe test it. I'll let So the idea is let everyone do that. Let them be creative. Not just in marketing but ideas as well. My my

Chapter 15: Validating New Concepts and Creative Blocks

[47:08] one source when I used to talk about this topic was Groupon. Groupon for mob events was the number one way to market.

[47:14] My first mud run cost $7,500. That was a total bill to run my first mud run. And none of that came out of my pocket. Why?

[47:20] Because I ran a Groupon and sold thousands of tickets six months before the event, right? So you got this free event coming in. And then what just I

[47:28] would search every group on and every single thing in every attraction to get ideas. So Groupon was another one. I don't use Groupon anymore. I don't I

[47:36] mean but but they still have ideas for for like oh let me get let me be creative let me get ideas the other one are listening to a podcast within your

[47:43] industry obviously they're not as fast Tik Tok is fast right seconds boom boom boom that's my answer nice how does this lifestyle that you're

[47:52] living impact your personal life it is my personal life so this lifestyle is my personal life I've made it work my wife just came and saw me like I'm an

[48:00] empty neester now sort of kind of and my wife just came up and stayed a couple days and she ba test the new rooms with me and we went on date night and we went

[48:08] and we took a scavenger hunt in a small little town Galina outside beautiful town and so the I think I think people find happiness in life when they have an

[48:16] identity they have income coming in they're they're the identity is known not only as a business person but hey I'm either a mom or a dad or I'm a best

[48:24] friend or I'm a volunteer for this and parts of my life are not fulf I'm not volunteering. I want to go volunteer some more. I want to do these things.

[48:31] But the other two are good. And then someone else said the other one. It's like short bits. Like when I build these resorts, I'm away for a short bit and then I'm not. I'm away for a short bit

[48:38] and then I'm not. And I think that is also a manageable piece.

[48:41] Has your creativity ever caused friction at home.

[48:44] Creativity. I I wouldn't call the word creativity. It's the ability to not listen is what creates friction at home.

[48:50] And it's whether I'm male or not male. I will appear that I'm listening. And me taking the laundry downstairs, if I didn't do it, it means that I don't love

[48:58] her, it's that's not true. On the way going downstairs, I picked up a sock and I put up my sock drawer and I did that.

[49:03] My toothbrush fell over and you know, I sat my toothbrush fell over and I noticed that the hinge was falling off of my door and but it was all in good tent. I I fixed four other things. So,

[49:11] no, the ability of creativity has been an asset. The byproduct of that is is is not appearing to listen. What's one

[49:18] personal sacrifice most people don't see for running a business and to be and if you're listening to this uh and you're seeing this you are an entrepreneur and

[49:26] you know all of these that you have to be extraordinary to do extraordinary things you have to be exceptional to do exceptional things you have to live a

[49:34] lifestyle that is not easy that's not hard but you do that because it's exceptional that's who who you become

[49:41] Netflix and chill what is that I'll watch Netflix at night it's like 20 minutes right before I go to bed so I go you know I fall off to sleep But it's a whole different lifestyle. And to me,

[49:50] the question is, not this question, it's like nothing am I giving away. There's nothing I'm doing exactly what I want to do. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs

[49:57] are are given this question not by you per se, but by other people are like, man, look at all the things you're missing, giving out on and doing all these things. Yeah. But we know it's at

[50:06] the end of the rainbow. And there is no end to the rainbow. It's always and forever. But that's our lifestyle that we choose. And if we do that, that's our identity. And again, what what what

[50:13] makes us happy? Is it is it money? Is it helping people? Is it identity? I believe identity of whe whether it's a mix of those or no I'm a pickle ball

[50:21] king and that's who my identity thinks your identity your identity then no I'm a I'm a business person what that means is I serve others what's that mean that

[50:29] means I don't get to do what everyone else does because I've got to arrange everything but I serve others and that's my identity and thus that's happen what goes through your mind when a

[50:37] business you created starts failing you okay yeah and that that's pretty fast it saw oh it's like didn't right it's oh what I'm going to do now and it

[50:46] it will Hey on you until you figure it out. And that's how it's always been for me. And it was kind of like that one just happened with me. But I realized this museum is so amazing, so awesome.

[50:54] Spent three months building it and no one would send in their pictures on time because yeah, send them in. Oh yeah, we'll do a corporate team builder to this museum. We're all in the photos.

[51:02] How are you going to get 12 people in your office to take pictures of themselves and send it? You're not. Why?

[51:06] Tons of other work to do, right? Massive failure. Like, oh, so what happens to me is like, okay, I'm in plan not even me or CD this whole thing or how much did I

[51:15] spend? And then I already knew how much I'd spend to try this thing. So, okay, whatever. But what if I could salvage it? And then all of a sudden, you'll get on. Boom. So, it went from learning that

[51:23] in two days to being on a plane going to Australia the next day to do an event that is and if anyone's listening, someone should just copy them right now.

[51:31] Let me think what what is their name?

[51:32] They they do this dark experience inside of a shipping container. And I went and saw them Australia. They've been doing it for seven years. They sell out. This

[51:40] is awesome, right? And I I decided to make art in the dark. It's beautiful. And if anybody wanted that, contact me.

[51:45] I've got all the fun stuff. But we already dropped it in. I took it and I dropped it into one of our our mansions here. It's crazy. It's so much fun. But anyway, they answer your question

[51:52] direct, please. Let the suck suck. It's okay. It's like just feel sad. All right, this sucks. Just flat. Okay, it's a human field. Give it a day or two.

[52:00] Trash it or wait, what are the assets?

[52:02] And then do the process of let's readjust. But definitely a sucky feeling. It's a growth stage in the valleys and right out the valleys. The window's going to open somewhere. I just

Chapter 16: Impact of Entrepreneurial Lifestyle on Personal Life

[52:10] got to jump through it. Maybe two windows, maybe three. Have you ever come close to quitting?

[52:15] Oh my gosh. Quitting? Yeah. I mean, quitting, I don't know what quitting would really mean. I'm unemployable. I You can't once you get to a certain level of being an entrepreneur, you

[52:23] can't be hired. Your brain has already been out of these stuff your brain back in a tomato can. It's physically. If someone were to hire me, I'd prefer that I own the company. Of course, I'm like,

[52:32] "All right, let me see how to do that." But I would work for them 24 hours a day. I mean, it just wouldn't work. I mean, like anymore. I don't think anybody would. even though I'd work for

[52:40] him all day long, it's like I don't know. So, no, I no, the thought of quitting now.

[52:46] What's maybe like the first uh the top three or five lessons? What's the f like top three lessons you learned from your previous failures and adaptations?

[52:57] The ones that I focus on the most now and there's been so many and so many but the ones I keep telling me myself about now is and and I've been doing this for

[53:04] years the less I work the more money I make which means delegate delegate delegate right and instead of for example I can just do one house I manage

[53:12] the whole thing I make x dollars more but then I wouldn't be able to get my time back right so number one the less I'm working so and that goes to if I

[53:19] have a hammer in my hand I'm losing money right the other is you know I I always ask myself who am I serving who am I serving I'm always serving someone.

[53:27] But if I really look and forget about me trying to make money and have I just serve my client, then wow. Wow. Am I able to make changes and I think about

[53:34] them and they love this and they love this and all of a sudden you got an amazing project. Who am I serving? Who do you serve? Answer that question and you're going to create something great

[53:42] for them instead of something just great for you. Oh, I made this great business.

[53:45] I'm like, yeah, but you did that because you added value. So what if we can think of value all the time when the great business come? It's pretty neat how those happen. So those two right off the

[53:53] top of my head, I'm sure there's thousands of more. fail and fail fast, but that is a byproduct of me. But if someone didn't know to do that and they go, "Man, that didn't work, right?" And

[54:01] then there's this pause and like, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. Of course it didn't work. You knew it shouldn't before you started. You should have known it won't work." And then have the other plan ready to go in the action,

[54:09] right? And then you just keep going and you're only going to fail if you quit, right? You're only going to fail if just keep going. So those are about the only couple that I that I'm coming up with at the moment.

[54:17] Yeah, that's good. That's good. Let's talk about like leases and personal guarantees and some some like interesting stuff like as advice for somebody right who've never maybe done

[54:26] it before. So, like, have you ever regretted signing a like personal guarantee, for example, on Oh, yes. Yes. I've signed personal

[54:33] guarantees out of cockiness and numbers and like, oh, that's fine, whatever. And and without even have my lawyer look at it, which and and I didn't even have to do it. I just did it because Oh, yes.

[54:42] Yes. Let's get through the closing.

[54:43] Let's get this let's sign the personal guarantee with something on there's another name that you also need to know.

[54:48] You got a personal guarantee and there's something else called a cognitive note that could be attached to the personal guarantee which means you're skipping all law proceedings. And if I have a

[54:57] cognitive note and I take that to my attorney and say, "Hey, listen. I can't pay this guy." And my attorney will go, "You're you're really much in trouble because we're not going to go to court.

Chapter 17: Navigating Business Failures and Resilience

[55:06] They're going to immediately put a hold on all your assets and so stay away from a cognitive note signing that." You don't really need to sign a personal guarantee. Now, I still sign if I'm

[55:14] doing mortgages, right? Sometimes I'll have to do a mortgage and like, yeah, I put in my name just because the financing things. But one way to look at it is like, well, what's the worst can

[55:22] happen? You know, I got insurance on the property. That'll take care of the note, you know, if something happens and I could just sell the property, the value.

[55:28] But from a rental standpoint, you better be pretty sure that you got money in the bank to pay the next five years for that. And five years is a long time for

[55:35] active entertainment. You you got to keep that in your mind. Oh, I'm going to go where was it? Someone recently wanted to start an asstoring bar and and what what are they what are they thinking?

[55:45] you know, because they didn't they don't know the the trend in the on the whole concept of of it. Yes, personal notes very very tricky. Very tricky with biggest leasing mistakes.

[55:54] Personal note guarantee right there. The biggest ones I made, I mean, I've gotten some ugly ones. $250,000, $250,000 where I had to pay and not have a space and it

[56:02] was all because COVID, but the attorney said, "Don't pay it because you're it's illegal to operate because the city of Chicago shut you down." And even though I could have paid it, I wanted to hold

[56:10] the cash. And I listened to the attorney and he was wrong. We went to court and he said no that's that's not because they thought some somehow that the

[56:18] government was going to go and do something. Someone else said hey go negotiate with the landlord and I went to the landlord negotiated with him said

[56:26] hey would it be okay if I paid you 5 days after just so I can money's around it's okay here and oh sure he said he

[56:33] did that and he immediately called in the cognitive note because I was one day late. I'm like, "Hey, well, why'd you do that?" Marty, I'm just protecting my family. Just kidding. That's not fair. I

[56:41] had the money to pay you and that caused months. That was really shady and it shouldn't have happened. But it learned, you know, it taught me. It's like, okay, all right. I see how we're going to play

[56:49] this game. So, cognitive notes are a tricky tricky thing. Leases and I don't do it anymore. I'm not doing it now. I just, you know, did creative finance,

[56:57] buy the property. Nothing wrong with doing the lease, but you got to watch it. You think, you know, you got to watch that whole leasing thing. That can be tricky, especially with active entertainment. Now, another question.

[57:07] You're dealing right now with like probably permits and approvals. Any nightmare permit or zoning experience?

[57:14] Uh, you really want to check zoning. For me, the escape room industry was interesting because we came out as corporate team building. That was our biggest thing. So, we'd pull out a city and say corporate team building. No one

[57:22] knew what these were. These were over a period of of number of years of escape.

[57:26] I had five thousand a day fines if I operated in certain cities. In some cities, like Boston, I had to shut down.

[57:33] didn't have a double means of egress apparently and I'm like yeah it does right here I'm like h we don't count that way it is tricky to scale as fast

[57:41] as if you're there for the long run but if you don't mind getting shut down then you can go ahead and do it so you just have to ask yourself now what I do you know with my current business is I

[57:50] double check everything I double check again I invite the fire department in I invite everyone in and say this is what I'm doing I'm not going to construct anything I'm just gonna build a little

[57:58] secret hideout here a little thing here but when I do construct things outside of the house then yeah pulling the permits and you got to learn that process and it takes some time and we

[58:07] have pulled the permits and then did the building and did everything right. So there is there's a lot to it and I've learned that that is a second part of the job for the budgeting but there are

[58:16] creative ways to work around that if uh for example glamping is is one that we're getting into next. We're going to be doing glamping and they have less structural permits depending on which

[58:25] state is it on wheels is it not on wheels. So that's that's our next exciting move that we look forward to.

[58:30] Interesting. Falcon operators avoid like major delays dealing with the city officials. Did you say avoid? Yes.

[58:37] The biggest thing is when I and I've had success doing this. When I do the walkthroughs with the permits and the building permits, I'm their biggest friend and I say this to them, "Oh,

[58:46] that's a great idea. Oh yeah, I should definitely do that. Okay, I'm on it. Is there anything else you think I should do between the next time we meet and then I do this?" Right? So, number one,

[58:54] because typically they hear this when they go through, "H, you mean I have to do that? Are you sure I got to do that?" Right? It's like trying to change the diaper of a three-year-old, a messy

[59:02] diaper for for the building permit. And they don't want to walk in there. But then they walk on my site. Hey, do you want a cup of coffee? This is gonna be so much fun. You know, if they speak

[59:10] Spanish, I want to speak Spanish. I was like, boom, I start cheer. Let me show you this thing we did. And I get really excited. And I do this last technique.

Chapter 18: Lessons from Past Failures and Leasing Mistakes

[59:16] Here's the last technique. And this has always worked for I go like this. Thank you so much. This is the list of things I'm going to do. What I'd like to do is have you back next Tuesday because I'm

[59:24] going to get all this done. Are you available next Tuesday at 10 a.m.? Well, I gotta check with the office. Is it okay if I call you tonight or tomorrow to make sure that we're on for next

[59:32] Tuesday? What I don't do is like, all right. Um, are you gonna call me to come out again? I already said it. I make sure I check with them to set it the day

[59:40] before they come. I would text them because you hit on a problem. I I imagine that's a problem for a lot of people. And how do you heard it around?

[59:47] I make it happen by actually asking what day we can meet. And then I call them the day before. Hey, I'm so excited for you to come out. You won't believe the

[59:55] work that I've done so far. looking forward. I leave the voice messages and then I'll text it the morning of. What do you think I do? The morning of.

[1:00:02] Morning of. Hi, Robert. It's snowing today, but I got here early. I'm so excited to see you today at 2. That means I planned it the day before. I

[1:00:10] made sure they're coming the day of. I made sure they're coming. And if they're right there at 2:00, hi Robert. Just checking in. Everything okay? Are you still coming at two? Because if they don't come today, it might be next week.

[1:00:21] And we all know what happens, right? So, but I do it a cheery way. Think about it. If I were an unpleasant person to deal with when they did the walkthrough,

[1:00:28] that's not they want to come out there, right? But every time they show up, okay, I'll get that done. All right, let me get that done. I'm so excited. Would you like come? So really just a lot of

[1:00:36] charm, but also planning them to move forward in the future.

[1:00:39] Let's move now to the marketing. How do you approach marketing for your uh business today?

[1:00:44] I use the acumen of my own self test over time and money spent with a certain type of ad and then I hire other people

[1:00:52] to go, hey, what else is hot? What else is working? And then I hire other people to study my competitors. Hey, what else is hot? What else? And then I listen to marketing podcasts. I listen to Gary

[1:01:00] Vee. He's awesome. Russell Brunson and Alex Herozi. This is my main three.

[1:01:04] Johnny Lee with Entrepreneurs on Fire. I do that. That's a third one. Fourth one.

[1:01:08] And then who else am I? Gary Gary Brack for biohacking. But Alex Herozi is great on sales and marketing is fantastic. The

[1:01:15] godfather of it all, Russell Brunson is amazing because he has the funnels. And then Gary Vee is just out of this world with what's hot on the next social media

[1:01:23] trend. He's always been because that's what he studied. I listen to those when I'm working out. I listen to them when I'm on a car. I listen on and I try things. This is how to me what I what

[1:01:32] what do I do? I serve people celebrating an anniversary, birthday or date night.

[1:01:36] That's what I do. Well, how do I find those? Well, how do I keep serving them?

[1:01:39] I got to I got no one telling me unless it's these three guys. They're not telling me directly. So, I got to put all the pieces together. I spend the bulk of my Marty time like I did it this

[1:01:46] morning. I'm at the gym. I listen to Alex Ramosi. Alex emoji is great. So awesome parcels out so great and then I'll wrestle listen to Russell Brunson when I when I'm going out grocery

[1:01:54] shopping today and I'm looking for those little tidbits. Then we'll try the new things. So certain part of the budget is trying new things. But then it still there's still so many old school

[1:02:02] marketing things from the email campaigns, the CRN system. Everyone's doing the big influencer thing now and we're starting to get to a point where like man influencers are working but we

[1:02:10] got to get new ones. But before long Gary Vee is talking already. Gary Vee is big into content content content. So, I just hired someone to create gen like

[1:02:18] generic content versus me on a mic. I don't want to be on a mic all day. You know, it's like, "Hey, that sounds great. Sounds like fun, but I got other things to do." But you can get around

Chapter 19: Navigating Permits and Zoning Challenges

[1:02:25] that with how what what are the videos your top competitors are doing? Create video vaults through your influencers.

[1:02:32] And this is one that I like. If you got influencers, you create video vaults.

[1:02:35] You got so much material. Then you take that and adjust to what your competitors are doing. And I hope that's equivalent because we're in process doing now. Hope that's equivalent to me being on a mic

[1:02:44] telling a story. I don't think it's going to be as good. But to answer your story directly and I forgot what was the question.

[1:02:49] No, I don't know. Marketing had to do with marketing. What is your marketing approach?

[1:02:53] Yeah. And there those three guys listen to him and they're hiring other people that I feel like are in the industry like you guys that also and and this is a big one for when you're hiring a

[1:03:01] marketing company. Who else are the clients of the marketing company? One thing I've realized 24 36 months every 24 the eyeballs of a human being will

[1:03:09] change. It used to be to an email for my business. It used to be to an email called a groupon that people would watch. That's what people used to watch.

[1:03:16] They don't do it anymore. Then it would go to this thing called a cell phone and people would uh search up websites on cell phone to get daily deals from a whole bunch of sites. Then we had social

[1:03:23] media, Facebook, then we have Instagram, then we have Snapchat, then we have uh Tik Tok. So the eyes of people are changing. Gary Vee says it's going to be in uh glasses that are coming up. He's

[1:03:32] big, oh, everyone's going to be wearing these glasses soon. Well, what is what is happening right now? and the the company that you hire to help you with

[1:03:40] your marketing. Who are their other clients? Because their other clients are going to be creating the acumen of the company that you're hiring. And that

[1:03:48] company's going to know in 24 months from now, they're going to know hopefully where the eyeballs are at. And that's the strategic partners when you're hiring a marketing company that

[1:03:55] you really want to get on your side because they can tell you, "Listen, don't do that anymore. It's not working.

[1:03:59] I just went to a seminar and I just learned this new thing. So, we're going to try it." Like, good. because I know it's not going to stay the same and I don't have time to go do all the

[1:04:07] research. So, hire a partner or bring on a partner when you do marketing that has other clients that goes to the seminars.

[1:04:12] Here's something I do ask when I hire marketing companies. How do you learn?

[1:04:15] Which podcasts do you listen to? Which seminars do you go to? Who do you follow? Which conventions you go to?

[1:04:21] Because that will give you an insight when when you're hiring marketing.

[1:04:24] Nice advice. And obviously, it's not a secret that we work with you. So, we do some of your marketing. Can you tell tell us a little bit more like share

[1:04:32] what what's your experience working with Blue Apple Marketing? Working with what marketing? Blue Apple Marketing. Oh, Blue Apple. Oh, it's been great.

[1:04:39] It's been great. Austin's awesome. He's on it. He's like, if I call awesome and text, it's going to get back to me. It's great. And he's got tons of big clients.

[1:04:45] I'm just a little a small guy. And then he'll share with me when he went to a convention, Marty would learn this new thing, right? Oh, that's so awesome.

[1:04:50] Okay, try it. Try this new thing. Or Marty, I don't know if people are still doing that anymore. Or how about this?

[1:04:56] But it's also pleasant. It's very pleasant. And the metrics, everyone, they know the metrics. So the first time when I get a call every week, we do a call for half an hour, 40 minutes with

[1:05:03] Austin level marketing. And the very first thing we go over metrics. All right, this is how full we are next week. This is where we're at now. And then so for a second and I'm usually

[1:05:11] driving on the phone or or maybe there's I'm in a building and I got hammer throwing someone a hammer getting this.

[1:05:17] I'm getting people coffee and he's talking to me and he's giving me the metrics. So in a few seconds I can go, okay, where's the budget need to be? And

[1:05:26] and we got the pause. That's one thing I like about how we have our meetings that we set up like that. And then uh the influencer marketing, excuse me, the influencer marketing that you guys are

[1:05:34] doing is big. It's a big thing right now, which is super awesome.

[1:05:37] So out of so many different agencies, why have you chosen to work with us?

[1:05:41] Ah, going back to the number one reason, I knew Demetri is cool cat, really awesome, he's non-stop, doing great things, always will, but

[1:05:49] he's got the idea like you I'm talking to the third person. Demetri has the idea of the vision of wait a minute, who's doing the thing with the least

[1:05:56] amount of friction that has the greatest return. And how can they show me? He's constantly going to all the seminars, the conference, paying for it, and then

[1:06:05] going, "Huh, I got that. I got that, but I learned this new nugget." You take the new nugget, you drop it into your bucket of nuggets, and now the whole value of the business, everyone gets to gets to

[1:06:13] really enjoy that value. That is the key strategy partner that I keep telling people, ah, that's who I want to pay for. That's who I want to have on my team. And then I'll say hopefully I can

Chapter 20: Building Relationships with City Officials

[1:06:21] suggest something to them like I really love this new thing that we're coming up now with this vault pulling from influencer vault and then putting it all together. I think that's going to help

[1:06:29] the entire industry because everyone's asking Chad GBT to do it but then they have to create AI. I'm like no just use the the chopped up bits of the influencers make the video and then

[1:06:38] build a robot around that that does that and then I think that's going to help everyone in the industry. So again it's like how can I serve them and they serve me and then eventually they go try this

[1:06:46] thing. Okay let's do it. So basically, if you hire someone that has those connections, they're going to know where the eyeballs are looking. And that's why

[1:06:53] I like working with Dimmitri and then because they they physically do it. You guys physically go to conferences versus someone that bought a course for 1,500 bucks. They got nine clients. They're

[1:07:02] all plumbers and now they want to do it with your active entertainment system and they don't they can't even tell you when their next conference is because the thing that they're doing that got the people success will go away. I

[1:07:11] promise you that. No one looks at Groupons anymore. Or maybe they do, but not for Active Entertainment, number one source. It's all your feeds, right? So,

[1:07:18] if if you don't keep getting that information constantly and ask your marketer, hey, what convention are you going to next? Well, what they're doing now, well, it's going to shrivel up.

[1:07:27] Nice. So, v the marketing your business, tell me what's most effective, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, Google.

[1:07:35] Sure. Ha just told me because we we do a study of like Alexi do more of what's working, right? Okay. So, for us, a long

[1:07:42] copy, 20 pictures in a post on a post on Facebook, not an ad, not an So, we'll we'll take 20 30 pictures of our sweets,

[1:07:51] write a long copy that's seductive, that has emojis in it that tells this awesome story what's going to happen. The people, they read this thing, and then they send it and they share and they

[1:07:59] comment. And then we do this. This is old school and it works. And he just told me like, of all the techniques we got, this thing works. It's old school.

[1:08:05] Here it is. We made it. We just made a post. We boost the post to people who are going to buy our product. Who's

[1:08:13] going to buy your product, Marty? People looking for an anniversary gift within the next 30, 60, 90 days that live

[1:08:20] within a 2 and 1 half hour drive of our location. So, you mean your rorowaz is extremely high because you're able to market to a niche that's looking to buy

[1:08:29] your product and your product is so seductively sexy that they want to buy it right now if they see the ad. Yep. We don't have to have seven contacts with

[1:08:38] the people. They just see the ad and they buy it. Why? Because they're looking to buy. Everyone's going to look to buy one of these three. And everyone if you're married in a relationship,

[1:08:45] you're gonna get an anniversary gift, a birthday gift, or you're going to have a date night if you're if you're in a relationship, right? We know who's in a relationship. We know who's a birthday, and we know who has an anniversary. So

[1:08:54] now I write three separate ads that show this amazing thing that's extremely difficult to replicate. To build what we just built is you got to figure out so

[1:09:02] much to build that. There's a lot of people who could do it, but the money is so little at the end of the day. I It's just an Airbnb. It's very little money that we make. I'm pretty sure this

[1:09:11] concept will be around for quite a long time that we're doing because it's like that's a lot of work for very little effort, but it's not a lot of work since we've already been doing it and we don't

[1:09:19] have to make that much money because the money's made with real estate over the long term and you kind of have to be in a position to do that. So, I'm a sharing to all those things with you because I

[1:09:26] just gave you the secrets. Anybody could go out today like, "Wait a minute. You mean people are looking for an anniversary gift?" Why? Because saris

[1:09:33] been around 15 20 year. Bellamir same thing and they do the exact same thing that we're doing but on a different I don't I don't think they adjust their

[1:09:41] Facebook ads appropriately. They might if they listen to this they might go do that or maybe they do it now and it seems like they would if they did it but I've seen their ads and I don't want to

[1:09:50] take my wife there. I just don't want to take her there. And nothing wrong with I love you Saris. I love you Bellamir. I'm like if we go swimming we're not going to go swimming together. That's just not

[1:09:58] something my I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But I'm sure there's a lot of people and and they they make they make multi-millions. They're much bigger than I am and tons of people go swimming

[1:10:05] there. So their niche and it's not about swimming. They buy chocolates and those things. But anyway, that's our strategy.

[1:10:10] And the number one and again you can't have a number one. We got number two, number three, number four. We do right now we're getting into content creation because Gary Vee says that and I think

[1:10:18] that that bubble's going to blow in 18 months. And if you think about this, everyone out there is, "Oh, it's free.

Chapter 21: Marketing Strategies for Success

[1:10:23] It's free. It's free." That's what Gary Vee says to to just create content.

[1:10:27] Create content. Post is free. It is not free. Number one, it's free to post it.

[1:10:31] It's not free to create it. It took time, thought, and energy. And then Gary Vee says, "Oh yeah, I got 30 people doing all that." That you had to pay,000

[1:10:40] a month to create all that. If you're an entrepreneur like myself, I pay one guy $500 a month to use all the videos from my influencer videos to create content.

[1:10:47] And we just started that. We just started. And we're excited to get that up and launched big time because everyone is telling us, "Oh yeah, content, content, content." Well, and it

[1:10:54] doesn't make sense for us to really do it because we don't have that many vacants. So it's like I don't want to spend too much money doing it. But that's another one. So the crux of what I'm telling to tell you if you are in marketing you cannot hang your hook.

[1:11:04] What if my Facebook ads have got got banned today and they have for other businesses for whatever some reason they got shut down. Then we go open another one real quick. But even with that you

[1:11:13] need to have a Tik Tok strategy. We have an influencer strategy is pretty huge. I mean it's a whole program. And I don't want to say that's free but it's kind of free but it's not because we have to

[1:11:22] give up sweet nights and I got to pay someone to manage it. But it's very valuable. So, we have influencer strategy. We have Facebook strategy, which is simple. And I told you what it

[1:11:29] was. So simple. I mean, it's like we I don't know. I don't even know how to do a Facebook ad. No joke. I can't I'm never I'm like I'd get so lost. I just do a post and I boost it. And then

[1:11:37] there's the Tik Tok things and there's the Instagram things. I've heard of Snapchat having things. And then content creation is what we're focused on now because Gary Key says so. But again, if

[1:11:46] everyone's creating content, it won't work because there's limited amount of time uh for everyone and that that bubble will because there's so much time

[1:11:53] in one day and if everyone's doing it, you have to have the logorithm to be the person to get up there and it'd be like winning the lottery at some point is what it would be. I'm not opposed to it.

[1:12:02] It's just I kind of know where that's headed. Again, it's all good stuff. You hit one, it goes viral, put money behind it. We we're planning on using our content creation as where we put our

[1:12:10] money. So, if we have an um one of these things take off, then we put the money behind it. and we boost it and we don't have to rely on organic searches, organic content because we're feeding

[1:12:18] people's eyes. So, it um um creating content is great for AB testing.

[1:12:22] Basically, we have nine minutes left because I have another another appointment. So, just letting you know. No worries.

[1:12:29] So, what is your favorite form of marketing? Well, Facebook. Facebook. Social media.

[1:12:34] Facebook. Just because I know how to boost an ad. I don't know how to advertise one. If you took that away today, I would uh probably sign up for Airbnb. I haven't even signed up for

[1:12:42] Airbnb yet. Even though we are an Airbnb model and on our website it says we're an Airbnb model. So I probably do that.

[1:12:49] So Facebook just because it's old school my demographic and I know how to use it.

[1:12:52] Instagram is Facebook. So I'm hoping everything we post on Facebook goes to Instagram. Really not for sure because I haven't had time to check it but the sales keep coming. So

[1:12:59] a few questions like one one word answer. Secret passages or live actors? Yes. That works. Idea or lunch? Idea.

[1:13:08] Okay. Zombie chase or romantic spa? Romantic zombie spa.

[1:13:13] No romantic spa because of my demography. I'm I'm tired. Fair enough.

[1:13:19] I mean, the zombie was a was a lot of chasing. Screams or laughers? Laughters. Laughters. Idea hit in seconds or days. Idea hit in seconds.

[1:13:27] Okay. First thought when something breaks. Fix it. What would you do if not this?

[1:13:32] I want to say that, but that doesn't make sense because that's a oneword answer. If not this, I would do that. So without saying that and had to do one

[1:13:40] word, I would say this. I would still do this. Risk or stability?

[1:13:45] Stability. Absolutely. Because because I'm highly risk adverse. Sorry. Stability. Okay. Chaos or structure? Structure.

[1:13:53] Mystery mansion or escape room? Mystery mansion. Romans or adventure? Yes. Ohio or Illinois? Ohio.

[1:14:00] If rules didn't exist, what feature would you add? If what didn't exist?

[1:14:05] Rules. Like if there was no rules or regulations, what feature would you add to your experience?

[1:14:09] I don't have any rules stopping me from adding I don't have anything because anything I want to do, we can do right now. Like maybe like an airplane, but I don't want to add an airplane. I'm just thinking airplanes have rules.

[1:14:19] Okay, fair enough. What an inspiring conversation. Marty Parker is one of those rare creators who who sees

[1:14:26] possibilities everywhere. His work is reminder that you can build anything if you're willing to take risks and move

[1:14:34] fast. So visit link in the description to explore Mart's romantic adventure mentions and their master class in

[1:14:41] immersive storytelling. If you enjoyed this episode with this episode, share it with another attraction owner or creative mind. Subscribe on our YouTube,

[1:14:49] Instagram, Tik Tok or LinkedIn. And if you want to be featured, visit attractionsincits.com.

[1:14:55] Thanks for listening and see you in the next