Why I Created Play Cafe Academy | Open a Profitable Indoor Playground

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

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

I will never forget four years ago when I was researching this business model. When my newborn was only 11 weeks old, I went back to work full-time and I just remember sitting at my desk thinking, "This is just not me. This is not what I want. I want to own my business."

But I had no idea where to start.

I didn't even really know that an indoor playground was a potential business that I could find myself in until my husband was traveling for work and he started noticing some other cities with “cool little mini indoor playgrounds or play cafés” and agreed to the opportunity. I thought, "Wow. This looks amazing. All these places are so busy! They must make so much money. I can even bring my baby to work!" If you watch my video about the six misconceptions people have about owning a play cafe, you’ll understand why I thought that way and why I was so off base. But it took me some time to realize why that wasn’t necessarily true.

This leads me to the real reason I created Play Cafe Academy…

When I was researching this business model, there was not a lot of information out there. Current owners really keep all of their business secrets close to their vest, and I don't blame them! It's hard once you've worked for years and years to establish a profitable business to want to give those secrets away for nothing. Even if you charge a consulting fee, you’re still kind of giving away the secrets that you’ve worked so hard for and it's very easy as a business owner to get a little smug and protective of your own research and development.

When it came time to open my own business, I wound up making a ton of mistakes (and I mean a TON of mistakes) because I simply didn’t know any better. So when I started getting emails and calls to consult for other potential play cafe owners, I couldn’t keep all this information to myself. While it’s easy for me to feel like an imposter or that there are other business owners more qualified than me to share this information, I know that there’s a 4-years-ago me sitting at work somewhere waiting for the next idea to jump out at them.

And selfishly, I do not want to see one more business close because someone who’s walked before them didn’t share any information! So why not share it myself?

In the past, people have come to me in one of two scenarios. Number one, when it's too late, their doors are closing, and they are making a last-ditch effort before they have to close. Again, this is usually because of that lack of information that I mentioned. There's not a lot of tools out there about how to run this type of business successfully. And I see a lot of myself in these people! There were a couple of times where we came very, very close to closing, but I'm so lucky that I have a great support system and that we had a financial safety net that really helped us. But I know that not everybody has that.

The second scenario that people come to me in is when they are just getting started and they're still bright-eyed about the prospect of this indoor playground business. They typically feel very confident, but they just wanna hear from an expert. This is my favorite scenario to help people in because there's room for them to grow, but unfortunately, there's just so much information that I wanna give these people and simply can’t. I wanna walk them through the hard stuff, let them know exactly how we made the mistakes, show exactly how much we spent on all of our equipment, and give out exactly how much money we make.

But my time is valuable. I have two little kids and also run another business... I don't have 12 hours to spend hand-holding each perspective owner through the process. (And let me tell you, it will take at least 12 to 24 hours of paid one-on-one consulting to even break the surface of what you need, including documentation.) At the average rate of $100 to $200 an hour to actually consult, imagine what you could end up paying for just a hint of education!