Goings-On

our crazy crew at Lincoln Park Zoo

It has been a little while since my last post so here's an update.

Last week was a mostly "off" week for us; we had family staying with us as part of their vacation, which meant we were on a kind of stay-cation. Cleaning before they arrived, and then socializing and having fun while they were here. Not much got done on the bar-work front. We were going to try to take a trip out to Mount Carroll so the family could check out the bar AND see Raven's Grin, but with so much other driving, it just didn't happen.

We continue to plug along on the business plan. I am thinking that I will probably share rough draft sections here as we get them hammered out, looking for feedback and questions and the like. I have several sections pretty well fleshed out already so those blog posts will probably start coming in the near future. I look forward to everyone's feedback.

Our biggest news: we created and launched a website to raise funds for the bar! We're calling it The $250,000 Project. We had been talking about using an indie crowdfunding website like Kickstarter, but upon further consideration we decided to make our own site and try to raise all the money ourselves. With Kickstarter or the like, we'd probably ask for donations of around $10,000 and then use that to beg for further money (from banks, investors, friends, relatives, etc). With those sites, if we didn't reach our arbitrary goal by our arbitrary deadline, we wouldn't get ANY money. If we DID reach our goal and get the money, we'd still have to beg for more money. Rather than keep asking and asking and asking, we figured we'd just let the world know what we need and keep working until we get it.

We're trying to raise $250,000 (hence the clever name), and we're willing to do it in pretty much any legal way possible. Donations, merchandise sales, eBay sales, micro loans, advertising, and more. Aside from completing the business plan, raising funds is our second most important step, so we're working on those two things simultaneously.
It would be really helpful if all of you did the following:
1) Check out The $250,000 Project website. See if there's any way you can help. Let us know if you have any feedback on the site itself.
2) 'Like' The $250,000 Project on Facebook. Daily updates and eBay listings will be posted there.
3) Spread the word about us to your family and friends in any way possible! This is probably the most helpful thing anyone can do for us. The more people that know about us and lend a hand, the quicker we will achieve our dream.

The biggest problem I have with the site right now? I have paypal donation buttons on there that just won't work. I am by no means a code monkey (I used iWeb to make the site, it's very WYSIWYG and that's about the only way I could pull off something like that), so I have asked my very good friend Kate to take a look and see if she can help me fix whatever mess I made there. Hopefully we'll have this resolved soon. And if you have any web building needs, check out her site! MissHTML. She's awesome.

I've started listing some of our things on eBay. I'm working hard on decluttering the house, getting rid of the extraneous items we have lying around (and we have a LOT). I doubt we have 250,000 saleable items in the house, but hey, if we DO and each one sells for $1, we'll make our goal through eBay alone. Any little bit we get this way will help. I'll be maintaining lists of everything we have for sale here as more gets posted, but if you're interested in seeing what we've got for now, here's a listing of our eBay sales.

Moving forward, I am going to try to post every day about what I've worked on as it relates to the bar. The background work can be very slow and tedious and I don't always have much to say here about it... sometimes not acknowledging what I HAVE done feels like we aren't really moving forward at all when in fact, we are. It just all takes time. (For instance, the business plan is taking hours to hammer out... building the website for The $250,000 Project has taken quite a few hours as well!)

I think that's it for our current updates. Let me know if you have any questions or advice. Thanks everyone!

Being Pulled In Different Directions

It seems that one of the biggest challenges in our adult lives is often the need to manage multiple tasks, often at the same time. You hear a lot about work-life balance, achieving a good one, following dreams, nurturing family, relationships, and friendships, and so on. It can be difficult to find solid footing in the sea of to-do lists we find ourselves surrounded with.

Things are no different over here. I often feel like we're not making a lot of progress on the bar because there's so much to do. Even though I put some work into it every day, sometimes hours of work (depending on my current family and life commitments), it still feels like we're going nowhere.

Logically, I know we are. I've got a really good rough-draft business plan... but it's VERY rough. More like a skeleton with a little bit of meat. Still lots of questions to be answered on there.

We have quite a few boxes packed for moving, and quite a few things put aside to sell.

I have some (hopefully strong) ideas for fundraising, and almost have the main platform we are going to try to use for it ready to launch.

I've been working on spreading the news about our business venture throughout the horror community as well as to all our family, friends, and acquaintances. Since our budget is so limited, a lot of our publicity at first will come through word of mouth... and we need all the help we can get there.

I've been doing all that stuff as well as taking care of my house, my family, our finances, our pets, our general life crap, our activities, our friendships, our grocery shopping, and anything else life feels fit to throw our way.

It's a lot of work. It's not easy work, but it's not hard work either. It just... is. Most of it I actually enjoy, which is funny to me. Granted, I'm not getting paid for any of the work yet, but I'm working on all of these things in the hope that we will have our own money-making business in the near future, so I consider it my job. I've never really had a JOB that I enjoyed before. I like the feeling.

Mostly, I get frustrated because parts of the process take so long. I'm impatient by nature and I want everything to just HAPPEN. Life doesn't work that way. And there is definitely value in the process. Working on the business plan, for instance, has really been helping us solidify our ideas and paint a solid picture of what we want and what will WORK. Packing things up now and sorting out things we don't need will both help us raise money AND make the actual moving process much easier. There is value in taking the time to do things right.

At the same time, the frustrated Veruca inside me is stamping her foot and screaming "But I want to be at the bar NOOOWWWWW!".

So many tasks to complete. They really are coming along, even if it doesn't always LOOK like it from the outside.

We will likely be back in Mount Carroll in two weeks. Who knows what will come of that visit, eh? We have some ideas and some hopes... but we'll see.

Writing An Effective Business Plan

It probably comes as no surprise, given my propensity for blogging, that writing comes very naturally to me. It is also likely that it is no surprise that IDEAS come naturally to me. I am constantly generating ideas for projects in many different spheres. Indeed, I have often wished that it was possible to find someone to pay me just to give them brilliant money making ideas... because I have some really great ones, but folks? I'm often lousy on the follow-through.

It seems to me that the reason I am often lousy on the follow-through is because the idea I have generated isn't the right fit for me. It's a good idea and I'm excited about it... but I am not the person meant to follow that path. Sometimes I try, and inevitably I fizzle out.


This idea, my Spookytown idea, is one that I've had for years... I keep coming back to it... but I've been lousy on the follow-through because, quite frankly, it seemed like a pipe dream. It is such a huge vision that it was nearly impossible for me to break it down into steps or even know what direction to turn in order to get it started.

Finding a location we love, and the idea of opening the bar, was one of those moments of serendipity where everything just gelled together in my mind, and it all seems to FIT.

We've done all the work we can up to having a completed business plan at this point, I believe. The business plan is the next logical step. We've been working on it (indeed, I have 16 pages of it rough-drafted), but it's a much bigger task than I expected it to be. It seems, from my research, that there is no one set business plan. Most of them have elements of similarity, but depending on your purpose and your business, each one is very unique. It's POSSIBLE to have a small, two or three page business plan, but for what we want to do, that doesn't feel right. The two primary purposes of our business plan are 1) to help us secure funding and 2) to make sure the vision we have in our heads is REALLY a good, worthwhile investment (inasmuch as research can support, anyway). That means lots of market research and financial documents.

I am certainly capable and confident about all of those things, but they are taking longer than I expected. Since I am an idea generator, naturally I keep generating more and more ideas for this project... and it is somewhat frustrating to have to write them down on a list and keep focusing on the business plan until it's complete. I'm not used to focusing on just one thing. It's a bit of a challenge for me.

For instance, the other day I generated what I believe is a great idea to raise funds for the project (actually I have generated TWO great funding ideas in the last week, heh), and I'm eager to get started, BUT the main one will take a lot of time and focus. So if I start working on it, the business plan will fall by the wayside, and suddenly we might find ourselves with a decent amount of funding but only a half-completed plan. That doesn't make logical sense.

So I have to reign in my impulses and complete the task at hand. It's a challenge for me, but that's OK. It's good to push ourselves out of our comfort zones once in a while. I'm just so excited about all of this that I want to tackle everything at ONCE! ... And there's not enough time or resources going around to manage it all effectively. So, one thing at a time.

In terms of writing the business plan, the two resources I have utilized most have been:

A) the free website Bplans.com, which has a TON of useful advice, sample outlines, and a large variety of free sample business plans.

B) The book The Complete Idiot's Guide To Business Plans PLUS, which has been chock full of information as well AND has a CD with a ton of information on it. I took it out from my local library for free, but I am thinking it will be well worth the purchase price and am considering buying it for our own personal reference as well.



When the business plan is complete, I'll be looking for a few sharp eyes to look it over. I'll need folks that are willing to proofread AND ask difficult questions. I'd like to make sure we didn't leave any holes and that the plan is as complete as possible before we use it to try and secure funding. If you are interested in being one of those people, please let me know.

Additionally, if any of you have any advice or resources regarding business plans that you'd like to share with us, please feel free! We appreciate all the help we can get.

Looking At Properties, Part Six

The sixth property was the last property we looked at with a realtor that day (we did go back to 'our' bar and look at it again, and YES I will share pictures of that in my next post!), and BOY was it a doozy. It was BY FAR the largest place we saw, and yet I didn't take nearly as many pictures of it as I did of other places because it was, quite honestly, completely overwhelming. We could easily have spent half a day looking at JUST this property. I'm going to switch things up a bit with this post and give you the property details at the end of the post, and am just going to do my best to lay out this property much as I experienced it.

This one was also in Savanna, close to the last two we looked at, and it was listed at around $180,000 (I BELIEVE; the price on the listing has changed considerably now (MUCH lower), but that is where it was when we looked at it). We almost didn't put it on our list because it didn't really fit what we were looking for... the property listing said something about four storefronts downstairs with apartments upstairs. I lobbied to put it on our viewing list though because it sounded interesting... it spanned several addresses, which meant it was several building together, and two of the storefronts were empty; the listing said something about knocking out a wall and making them into a restaurant so I thought 'eh, what the hell, let's check it out'. Boy oh boy. I'm still not sure how I feel about that decision! People say "it never hurts to look", but let me tell you my brain aches every time I think about this place, lol.

So we met the current owner of the building, who pulled out a GIANT keyring and proceeded to take us on a tour of the place. We started in one of the empty storefronts; it had previously been a restaurant. We spent a decent amount of time looking at it, not realizing how very MUCH we still had to look at. 

This and the next few pictures are the first storefront we saw.

I took quite a few pictures in here.

I had no idea my camera was going to be basically useless here, lol.

This was some outbuilding that housed a boiler or something they no longer use. She suggested it could be storage or could be removed to make more parking or something.

We're looking around and the lady is telling us about the previous owner and the other storefronts and we come to realize that there are actually SIX storefronts, not four... this building spans an entire city block. Wow. FOUR of the six are rented. Two of them are rented to restaurants, the other two are a cute thrift store and an antiques shop. We went into all the storefronts and were a tad overwhelmed already, but mostly I was seeing dollar signs... except for the fact that it wouldn't make sense to open a restaurant in our building that already houses two restaurants. Hmmm. But the possibilities...

The next few pictures were of one of the restaurants in the place.

Then we went upstairs. It was pretty dingy and dirty, but people were living there. It was pretty busy, actually. We saw several people coming in and out and I started thinking "exactly how many apartments are up here, anyway??" The lady is knocking on doors and asking people if we can see their ROOMS. The first few we looked at were just that, ROOMS. One or two small rooms together, with a bathroom. She's telling us about how she gives each of her tenants a mini fridge and microwave and I'm thinking "what the hell IS this place, like a boarding house? People LIVE like this? WHAT?" I was utterly confused. She also showed us an actual apartment. And THEN she took us UPSTAIRS.

LOTS of creeeeepy hallways.

Plastic over the fire escape. Apparently this is OK with the fire dept. As long as people can tear through it, you can cover that shit up. Whatever.

Yeah, there was a third floor to this madness. More of the same; mostly rooms with one or two apartments. Dingy and run down. The section we saw covered probably the space above, oh, two of the storefronts below.

And THEN, she took us through ANOTHER door into the section of the building that needs so much repair she simply shut it down and just flat out doesn't USE IT. Those two floors covered the top of the other four storefronts. Second and third stories of room after room after room after room. Most of them filled with junk, with falling ceilings and dirty dingy rugs. The layout reminded me of a closed-down version of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining... she just kept opening doors and sometimes there would be a room, sometimes an apartment, sometimes a giant closet, sometimes... a whole other hallway. It went on and on and ON. It went back way further than I thought too; this place was just HUGE.

Blogger decided not to let me organize my pictures very well in this post. The layout is a MESS. Much like this property!

At some point she mentioned that it had been a hotel and suddenly the rented 'rooms' made total sense to me. The listing said something about the place having hotel STATUS but by the time we looked at it I had forgotten that, so I was utterly confused for a while.

Words and pictures cannot really give you the magnitude of this place. It was... quite frankly, it was amazing. A very special place for a very special buyer. It needs a TON of work, but the work could be done in sections too; fix up one building's worth and rent them out while you work on the next section. There is so much raw potential in this place it just boggles my mind. Part of me is totally in love with it. Who doesn't want to buy a giant creepy old partially abandoned hotel and live the crazy life in it?? OK, maybe most people don't, but *I* do! This place could be Raven's Grin 2, it's that crazy. Or if I was ready to open my haunted bed and breakfast, this place would be PERFECT.

Unfortunately, it doesn't fit our current goal at all. As I mentioned, it doesn't really make sense to open a restaurant in a building that already has two restaurants as tenants. And we're nowhere near ready to aim for the haunted B&B. And we couldn't open a restaurant and run it AND try to renovate and run this place without major headaches. I like a good project, but this is a PROJECT. 

Still, I think the reason that it hurts my head every time I think about it is because it captured part of my heart and I wish SO MUCH that we had more money and could buy both this place AND the other bar and run both at the same time. We would need enough money to afford us the luxury of time and lots of staff though, because this place needs SO MUCH work. It's just... it was truly amazing. Opportunity galore. It's just not the right time for us to tackle something like this and it KILLS ME.

After we left, OJ said something about the pool. "WHAT pool?!" I exclaimed. 

"She said there was a pool! In the basement!" 

"SHUT UP. You're totally lying."

"No way! I swear she said there's a pool in there somewhere! They don't use it because they had problems with pipes freezing, but I swear to god there's a pool somewhere in that building."

The place was so huge we MISSED the POOL.

So. I noticed when I pulled up the listing for this place to drop the description into this post that the price for the place has dropped by about a hundred grand. It's now listed at $84,999. THAT KILLS ME EVEN MORE. It says it has 14,420 square feet but I'm pretty sure that's a lie. I think it's way bigger than that, heh.

The listing reads: "LOCATED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DOWNTOWN AREA, MISSISSIPPI RIVER, STATE PARK & BIKE PATH, HOTEL STATUS, 2 APARTMENTS--22 ROOMS SECOND & THIRD FLOORS ALL VACANT NEEDING MAJOR REPAIRS. 4 STORE FRONTS-3 WITH TERRAZZO FLOORS CURRENTLY RENTED-2 RESTAURANTS, ENDLESS POSSIBLITIES FOR THIS PROPERTY WITH PARTIAL VIEW OF MISSISSIPPI RIVER ON NORTH END OF 2ND & 3RD FLOORS-CO OP ARTISTS, BIRD WATCHERS, BOAT/CANOE ENTHUSIASTS, BICYCLISTS (GREAT RIVER BIKE PATH) & SO ON."

Anyone want to buy this place AND the other bar for us? We need a patient mega-investor! I can do great things with these places, I assure you. I just need enough money to get the properties and to have a little TIME to put some TLC into them. But I have such great plans...

(Yeah. I don't think we're getting this one. But good god do I want it. But if I could only pick ONE, it would be the bar.)

Emotions In Business

downtown Mount Carroll

 Last weekend we spent some time in Mount Carroll doing a bit more research on our bar plan. We saw a few more properties in the area; we revisited the property that set us on this path in the first place; we reviewed the books for the business that we are hoping to take over. I'll talk about all of this a bit more in the coming days, but the upshot was:

*we really like the original building that set us on this path, and we could feasibly move in and take over even if we couldn't raise the money to make all the changes we want initially
*the books for the business are pretty bad, and that's concerning, especially as we would have to work hard to endear ourselves to the locals while we also tried to bring tourists in
*we have no capital to speak of, and raising the money we need is going to be difficult
*we really kind of love this place and want to do this. Or at the very least, *I* do. I'm not sure if my husband loves it like I do or not, but he's definitely on board with wanting to start this place.

So it's sort of come down to 'shit or get off the pot' time. I knew I wanted to do this before, but after this weekend, I REALLY want to do this. And that's scary. I've tried not to get too emotionally invested in the process because when you're trying to buy a place, that's the first thing they tell you - 'don't get emotionally invested; there are lots of properties, and lots of reasons deals fall through, and you can just keep looking'. I know that's true. But as human beings, it's really hard to move along with a dream and NOT get emotionally invested.

I really liked these booths (from a different property).

Now that we have determined we really do WANT *this* place, the emotions are rising. My to-do list has grown even more after this weekend, and it all suddenly seems so DIRE. Especially the part where I need to hustle and raise money. The amount of money we need isn't as huge as it would be if we were looking to buy a bar in a large city, but it's still a lot of money, especially when we have none to speak of. I have some plans in place for trying to raise capital; to raise at least enough of a down payment where we can convince someone to give us a mortgage for the place, if not a little extra to do some of the decorating and carry us for a few months of losses. All of my ideas take time though, and I'm suddenly feeling that squeeze of 'you don't have TIME!'

please don't fall through the floor, please don't fall through...

It's an uncertain thing. The building is for sale, the current business isn't doing very well (for a number of reasons), and the area isn't in high demand. It's likely that they aren't going to get any offers for the place in the couple of months it will probably take us to get funding together. Then again, it's also very possible that they will get offers, and that will be the end of this particular dream. For now.

It's going to take a lot of work to get everything we need together. I think hoping for a month is extremely unlikely; two months will be difficult. Three is probably more what we'll need to get all of our ducks in a row. A short amount of time and yet also a long amount when I let myself worry about someone else buying the place while we bust our asses trying to get it first.

my husband found this picture and these glasses in a closet.
Clearly THIS building hasn't been inhabited since the 80's.

I have so much work to do. So much effort to put into getting the money together, getting the business started... and so much still when it comes to running my family. So many loose ends to tie up, so many obligations to back away from, so many changes. This is a huge transition; we will be changing virtually every aspect of our lives. It's a change I desperately want for us, but it's ginormous. Almost everything about our lives as we know them right now will change. Our careers, our focus, our schedules, our proximity to family and friends, our finances, even our marriage. For better or worse, we will suddenly be together almost 24/7. The stuff we have; we'll be in the bar so much that we won't need most of it. (One could argue that I don't 'need' most of it now, but as a recovering semi-hoarder, we're just going to leave that one alone!) We are looking at huge shifts in our lives.

THIS unused hotel was... like The Shining or something.
Someone could EASILY turn this place into Raven's Grin 2!

It's... frightening. Don't get me wrong, I'm ridiculously excited. I want this, I want it VERY badly. But it IS scary. And I don't want to drag my feet and hold myself back. Most of me is ready to dive in headfirst. But it IS more than a little scary at times.
And the scariest part, for me anyway, is the fear that I will throw myself in headfirst and make tons of progress towards this... and someone will buy the bar before we get to it. Or they won't sell to us. Or something. Something to pull the rug out from under me and make it all go away.

Our daughter frolicking in what could become her backyard.

But one can't allow fear to dictate one's path, and as they say, nothing ventured nothing gained. Someone might get to it before we have a chance to do everything we need to do, it's true; but if I don't start doing those things, we'll certainly NEVER get to it ourselves anyway.


This is definitely not for the faint of heart though, I'll give you that.

Stage Fright

When I started dreaming about my grand vision of Spookytown years ago, I knew a day would eventually come when I would have to 'put up or shut up', as it were. I just always figured that day was down the road a ways. I don't recall if I mentioned it here before or not, but I sort of assumed this wouldn't be something that would come together for a while. When I first started dreaming about it, I was single, living in Chicago, working full time, paying off loads of college debt, and also dreaming about starting a family. It was there that I met my husband, and we started a family just a TAD quicker than we'd planned, and suddenly we were in the throes of new parenthood, both working full time. Then we found ourselves buying a house and moving to the south suburbs, STILL working full time, paying off debts and bills. Through it all I kept dreaming and planning, but couldn't quite get it all to gel together in a way that seemed like it would actually WORK for us for a few more years. There's always an excuse you can throw in your way, like a roadblock from hell: we have too many bills and not enough capital. We will never be able to sell this house in this market, so we're stuck here. Finding the right location seems totally impractical, AND we'd have to worry about schooling for the kids too. And on, and on, and on.

Finding a location that appeals to us both, pretty much by accident, and then speaking aloud to each other that we were both, as it happens, totally on board with this idea, hey, let's do this thing, seems like serendipity. Or, at the very least, the perfect opportunity. We can MAKE it be the right time because I truly believe none of our roadblocks are insurmountable.

And yet, while we shared it with close friends and family, and while I DID start a public blog on the matter, I hadn't pursued any kind of aggressive marketing stance. I didn't announce it to all of my facebook friends at large, for instance. I didn't email every single contact I have and tell them about it. An internet-wide marketing campaign was (and still IS) part of my master plan, but I wasn't quite ready to launch that yet.

Then I entered a contest yesterday to win a grant, and I figured that was my "put up or shut up" time. Since part of the judging process relies on public vote, I'd better put out all the stops and let everyone know. So I did. Yesterday. I DID facebook it to everyone on my list. I DID email all my contacts and ask them to vote (which you can do, once daily, by clicking the link above, by the way). It's OUT THERE.

I spent the rest of the afternoon alternating between "wildly excited" and "ready to poop my pants".

It occurred to me that I was feeling so weird largely out of stage fright. It's more than a little intimidating to not only tell the world that you HAVE a huge dream, but also that you are actively working to make it happen. We talk about the bar like it's a THING we have, and yet... we have nothing concrete. We have nothing but dreams, lots of books to read, and a half-formed business plan. There are so many steps between here and the bar that feeling a bit of stage fright over announcing our plans seems only natural. What if things fall through? What if the particular bar we have our eyes on gets sold to someone else, or has too much wrong with it for us to tackle right now, or is too expensive? What if, what if, what if?

So I felt all the 'what ifs' yesterday. I allowed myself to experience the feelings, to think about each one, to revel in the thrill of the amazonian task we are facing. Then I told all those what-ifs to fuck right off. Because I DO believe we can do this, and not a single ONE of them is a deal-breaker. Yup, even if we don't get the particular bar we have our eyes on. Because this dream existed long before I ever knew about that location. Because it's a whole huge world out there with lots of places that would be perfect for Spookytown. And because, more than anything, I believe in myself and my family, and I KNOW we can do it.

Welcome, those of you that are just joining the blog. I'm excited to have you along on our journey. If nothing else, it should be a really entertaining trip down the path of entrepreneurship!

Books!

We are always interested in furthering our education, especially when it comes to preparing for this business! What books would you recommend we check out in relation to opening our spooky bar / restaurant? They can be business books, books on running bars, books on running restaurants, spooky books, inspiring books, anything you think might fit the bill! Feel free to take a look at our running to-do list as well; that might give you some idea of the steps we're working on and thus which books to recommend.


Currently we have and/or have read the following:







Thanks in advance for your recommendations! We really appreciate them!

A Running To Do List

This is our running to-do list, in roughly chronological order, as we work towards this goal of opening our awesome bar. If anyone has experience in any of these areas, or suggestions on any of these items, or thinks we should add / move / remove anything, please feel free to share your thoughts with us!

get restaurant running book

get a book about business plans

make up a business plan (ch. 5)

research the area and competition

find a realtor

look into bartending school - cost and length of course

find advisors - accountants, lawyers, etc (ch. 3)

find out timelines for permits (ch. 3)

clean up our current house / pack stuff for moving

list current house for rent

set up temporary office / living space

get info on liquor license (ch. 3)

develop logos, trademarks and brand (ch. 4 and 6)

set up bank accounts

find funds (ch. 3)

buy the place

research computer sysems (ch. 12)

look into credit card processors

look into payroll systems 

set up utilities (BEFORE moving in or starting any construction)

complete papers for permits and licenses

find a contractor (ch. 4)

get construction going

review plans for BOH, FOH and exterior (ch. 6)

research equipment suppliers

source equipment (ch. 7)

work on manuals, job descriptions, etc

order needed equipment

order tables, chairs, etc

purchase POS system

start hiring process (ch. 6)

investigate phone systems and companies

finalize menus and hours

research pest control

review resumes

source food and drink suppliers

bartending school?

revise advertising and promotion plan

research music options

create a training schedule

order merchandise (to sell) and uniforms