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

Regardless of whether or not you are personally worried about the effect of COVID-19, as a business owner or a potential business owner, taking proper precautions could mean the difference between your business surviving over the next several months or not.

Depending on your area, you may already be feeling the impact. In some countries and U.S. states, public gatherings have been limited or banned, and it looks like more and more locations are beginning to follow suit to prevent the spread of ...

As I mentioned in my blog about the important trends I see emerging for indoor play spaces in 2020 and beyond, Mobile Play services are a great option for thinking outside the box and either generating an additional source of revenue for your brick and mortar indoor playground OR for raising funds to start a brick and mortar space.

SO, WHAT IS A MOBILE PLAY RENTAL SERVICE?

Specifically, what I referred to in my “Important Trends” blog are businesses that bring a mobile soft play area or some o...

This past week in our Play Maker Society group coaching program (which is an optional way for Play Cafe Academy members to really uplevel their game and accelerate their success with the program) we had a veteran (10 year!) Starbucks manager answer questions and WOW, she provided some amazing insight!

While the full 1-hour training (plus MY 1-hour training on my lessons in operating a profitable cafe) is only available for Play Maker Society members, I did want to share a few of her insights he...

Before going any further, I want to note two very important things related to this article. 

1. I am NOT a lawyer and therefore cannot offer legal advice. Before opening your business, you should consult with a business lawyer to ensure you have all proper licenses and permits. I am simply speaking from my experience and research.

2. I live in the state of New York, in the United States. Depending on where you are located, the permits and licenses required to own and operate a business may d

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Well FIRST I need to explain this title and this topic-- because I already know what many of you are thinking. Don’t I encourage and teach entrepreneurs exactly how to be successful in, very specifically, a brick and mortar industry? Well, the answer is YES. 

And even though I believe success and happiness are very possible in the brick-and-mortar space, this journey is NOT for everyone. 

So you can call this my “tough love” blog for all of my brick-and-mortar hopefuls -- and try to think of t...

As you likely know if you’ve been following me for a while, we focus on birthday parties at our indoor playground locations.

We rely on having a booked-out party calendar every single weekend to be able to be successful. I love being able to look at the month ahead and know with certainty that not only will all of our bills and team members be paid, but also that I can pay myself consistently as the business owner.

Even if you do NOT plan on making parties your main focus, relying on open-play...

Something that we are consistently asked by customers year-round, but especially when we are in the throes of flu-season, is how we sanitize our space and keep it clean.

While I can’t speak for other facilities, I know that keeping our space sparkling clean is a top priority. After all, my own children play there daily-- so I have a personal stake in the effectiveness of our cleaning procedures as well.

So today I’d love to shed some light on how we manage to keep germs at bay the best we ca...

Something that I carefully examine at the end of every year of business is how we could have saved money, been more efficient, or offered a higher level of service.

One thing that has stuck out in my mind for the past FOUR years-- yes FOUR years-- in my business is all of our different systems and software and processes and how ineffectively they all integrate together, causing a MASSIVE bottleneck in our business.

“Which systems?”, you might be wondering. After all, running a fairly small ind...

Something I am careful to do constantly is monitor other indoor play spaces in order to best understand what’s working and what’s not working in the indoor play industry. 

As we kick off a new year, I wanted to share 4 emerging trends that have been increasing in popularity, especially during the last 18 months or so.

For current indoor playground owners and prospective owners alike, adapting to at least 1-2 of these trends to accommodate changing customer preferences will be crucial to succes...