One of the great things about running Monkey Bizness is the chance to talk with so many aspiring entrepreneurs about what they want to accomplish in opening a business.  That may sound corny, but it’s true.  I get so much energy from listening to others talk about taking the leap and starting their own business.

One major gray area with most that I talk with is how are they going to finance their new business?  While this might be an uncomfortable question that many are afraid of the answer, in reality, it is one of the first before starting a new venture.  One reason many don’t like to confront this question is that there is not a lot of great information on the options that are out there.  Being a certified public accountant, I have grown comfortable with many of the terms and methods mentioned.  However, if not for that training, I would be in the same boat as most others.  Below is a video we have put together to go through some of the most common ways to finance a business along with a high-level view of SBA loan funding.

If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us using this link.

Monkey Bizness was recently featured on a new story in Sioux Falls, SD about the changing face of retail. While the death of retail has been somewhat over hyped in our opinion, there definitely has been a shift. There is no denying that there is less “traditional” retail then there was 5, 10, or 20 years ago. In 2017, 6,700 retail stores closed. While this seems like a lot, and by many measures it is, the average retail consumer probably wasn’t too effect by this. According to Forbes, physical store openings actually grew by more than 50% year over year. By many different estimates, 90% of retail sales were still conducted at a brick and mortar store in 2017.

What has changed is the function of retail. As Monkey Bizness has looked for space in various different markets, we have had a lot of conversation with various people throughout the retail real estate market. While they will tell you things are definitely slower, it is the not the death that you hear about in a lot of the press. What they are seeing is different participants entering the landscape. Concepts like Monkey Bizness, entertainment venues, and restaurants have been taking up much of the space. While the market is still somewhat “soft”, there is still a good amount of movement.

Take a look at the video featuring Monkey Bizness below:

If your interest in learning more about Monkey Bizness, contact us now.

In 2009, Tim Ferriss wrote the book The 4-Hour Work Week.   The premise was how to make a lot more income while working a lot less time (this is a complete oversimplification, but you get the drift).  I have read the book and there are some great tidbits of advice, especially on productivity.  Before and after this book, there has been a treasure trove of literature written around the concept of earning more while working less.  This year alone I have had over 200 calls with people interested in franchising with Monkey Bizness and I can confidently say, this is the only book I have heard referenced multiple times.

It is human nature to be attracted to the simple things in life.  American’s love watching their TV and in part, that is because it is simple.  As my father, and many other people say “If it is easy, everyone would do it”.  If there was a secret to doing making money without working for it, my guess is you wouldn’t be able to read it in a book on sale at Amazon for $14.21.  With no disrespect to Mr. Ferriss, it is hard to make a lot of money.  It is even harder to do it in 4 hours a week.

During conversations with many of those 200 people, I often get asked how many hours a week someone can expect to work in their Monkey Bizness.  As an indoor playground franchise, there is a notion that you just set up the equipment and people show up.  Whether it be Monkey Bizness, a pizza shop, or a shoe store, part of the formula for success is the same.  Those owners that are committed to their business and willing to pound the pavement every day will have a higher rate of success than those that don’t.   I often tell franchisees that there return on investment is directly correlated with the time spent on their business.

This is not to say that you need to work 80 hours a week in your store.  You might, but I would be lying to you if I said any current Monkey Bizness owners are doing that on a regular basis.  I know a few different successful multi-unit owners who spend little to no time in their multiple stores in a given week. At this point, you might be thinking to yourself, “that contradicts everything you just said”.  Well….most of these multiunit owners spent a lot of time in each store as it got up and running.  They now spend time managing their managers.  Some spend the majority of their week marketing.  Some spend that time in operations.    The point is, these owners still spend the majority of their time working on their business.

Owning a business is a blast, but it is also a lot of hard work.  If someone is telling you otherwise, then ask yourself one question, “If this is that easy then why isn’t everyone else doing it?”.

Monkey Bizness is actively looking for new owners, specifically in Midwest, Texas, and Rocky Mountain markets.  If you or someone you know is interested, please reach out to us for a quick conversation to see if this might be the right fit for you. Contact us now.

I am extremely fortunate to be married to a 3rd-grade teacher.  My kids go to my wife’s school and because of this, we probably know more details about their lives than a lot of parents.  However, there is one week a year where there is a monumental downside to being married to a 3rd-grade teacher.  Every August, she starts back at school a week earlier than them, and I have 3 kiddos at home while I am running three Monkey Bizness stores.  I realize this is common for some work at home parents in the summer, but it turns my world upside down.  The “fun dad” in me thinks we need to do something big because it is their last days of summer vacation.

Luckily, I am the owner of a few indoor kid’s entertainment places!  For a few hours each day, I take my kids to Monkey Bizness and let them go wild.  Usually, during this time, I am having discussions with my managers, doing tasks in front of my laptop, or repairing something.  However, every once in a while, I sit in the café as a normal customer would and just observe.  Admittingly, I do this less than I should.  During this time, I get a chance to make several observations about my business and customers.  Below are four reasons all business owners should be a customer in their own business more often.

1. Observe the Customer Experience – I try to take a few hours every day and really be present in my stores which might include helping at the front desk, talking with employees, or cleaning up.  However, my interactions with customers during this time is limited to checking them in and small talk.  While sitting in the Monkey Bizness café, I really had a chance to observe how customers were using Monkey Bizness.  It happened to be a slow, late summer afternoon.  At the time, we had 10-15 kids in the facility.  It was fascinating to observe both how the kids utilized our play floor and what the parents did while their kids were playing.  This was not just a quick snapshot of what each was doing.  Rather, this was a 3-hour observation of their behavior.
2. View Your Facility in Operating Time – At Monkey Bizness, it is critical that your facility is reviewed regularly. We have procedures in place where managers are responsible for checking equipment prior to opening each day.  This often includes actually bouncing in the bounce house and going down the inflatable slides.  As an owner, I often walk through my facility at 7:30 AM looking for issues.  However, these are both different from how the facility is during operating times.  Customers, and kids specifically, will use the store in ways you can’t imagine.  I observed kids trying to get underneath our soft play unit.  This includes trying to break the cords that keep the employee entrance shut.  Armed with this data, we can now address a few items before they are issues.
3. Ease Dropping On Your Customers – Before I start, I feel some of you already making some judgements about this one.  Let me defend myself by saying that if you sit at any table in a Monkey Bizness café, you are going to overhear conversations.  I am not using spy equipment or anything similar.  Listening to customers conversations can be fascinating for many different business reasons.  First, you learn what they care about.  You can use this when developing new processes for your business or coming up with your next marketing campaign.  Second, you get a chance to hear feedback about your business.  Yesterday I overheard a customer with 4 kids say a sarcastic comment about our check-in process for new customers.  We won’t change too much, but we will at least have some awareness of this.  And lastly, for Monkey Bizness we want kids to stay all day.  I overheard many reasons kids loved or didn’t love Monkey Bizness.
4. Observe Your Staff – Many of you will say that the staff is on their best behavior when the owner is around. That might be true for the first hour.  They can possibly keep it together for two hours.  But all staff can only hold it together for so long, and that is generally around the three-hour mark.  Even small observations are helpful.  For instance, are they leaving messes too long before picking them up, is there cell phone upfront with them, are they using the correct greeting when customers check-in.  These are traits that are built out of habit and you’ll get to observe them first hand.  As an owner that helps out, I often observe these from my point of view.  However, from a customer view, some of the impressions from these interactions come off as completely different.

There is a saying consultants love to say to business owners about working on their business instead of working in their business. This is great advice for a Fortune 1000 CEO. However, for a Monkey Bizness owner and most other small business owners, the ones that I observe having the most personal, financial, and business success are those that strike the right balance between working on and working in their business.

Monkey Bizness is actively looking for new owners, specifically in Midwest, Texas, and Rocky Mountain markets.  If you or someone you know is interested, please reach out to us for a quick conversation to see if this might be the right fit for you. Contact us now.

As an accountant and a general number’s person, I love data.  When I talk about data I often go into far too much detail about the process I went through to come to my conclusions.  I have gotten the weird looks from people when I tell them how I parse through and interrupt data (although they love talking to me around fantasy football draft time!).

For the past several years, one of the business world’s hottest catchphrases has been “big data”.  I am an avid reader of articles that the Harvard Business Review puts out and they like to write fairly often about big data.  As a small business owner, I am often frustrated about how the articles and literature that is written on the topic, in general, is geared towards Fortune 1000 type companies.

At Monkey Bizness, we use our own version of Big Data.  I think this is unique because system-wide our sales are less than $5 million and we employ right around 85 people.  By every measure or standard, we are a small business.  For us, we have two distinct phases in collecting data to make business decisions; Collection and Analysis.

Many small business owners I talk with don’t believe they have the systems in place to collect data they could use to make decisions.  I often think they are discounting some of the systems they are using every day.  At Monkey Bizness, we have a few different systems that most businesses also have that we use to collect data.  The most obvious one that is available to every business is their point of sale system (“POS”).  Their POS stores all sorts of information about transactions and customers that most owner’s don’t utilize.  We utilize Square’s POS which also collects data about our customers, just by when they swipe their credit card.  We are then able to determine things like average ticket size and how often a customer visits for analysis.

Another system we use is our loyalty system, Return Visit.  At Monkey Bizness, we decided to embark on creating our own loyalty system two years ago.  When we looked around at available options, we thought we should develop our own was the best decision for us.  However, there are a lot of great “off the shelf”, cloud-based solutions out there that will work as well.  While our system is not too complicated, it does collect information such as zip code, kids ages, number of visits, dates for visits, etc.  This basic information can start to answer questions for us:

• How old are our average customers?
• How far do our customers come from?
• How much does the average customer visit?

This just scratches the surface but you can begin to see how it helps us determine how we should design our marketing and demographics of our customers among other things.

Lastly, we can utilize basic services like Mail Chimp, Facebook, Google Analytics, Google Adwords, and other platforms to get data about our customers.  Did you know Facebook will provide a breakdown of who likes your business?  This is great demographic data.  With Mail Chimp you can design your campaigns so that you can see what is working, who is opening your emails, and who is redeeming certain offers.  Google Analytics tells us who is visiting our website, at what times, and what pages they are leaving our website from. We can start to alter the design of our website and marketing based on these results.

All of these tools are available for most (and some for free) and a lot of business owners are already utilizing these systems.  The next step most business owners need to take is to figure out the proper way to analyze this data for their business.  Some of these tools do the analysis for you.  At that point, its up to you to determine how to use it.  At Monkey Bizness, we are constantly working with our owners to provide them insights from the data we are reviewing.  This can be extremely powerful to shape our marketing and business strategy going forward.

There are a ton of books and free advice out there that will help you start and supposedly run a successful business.  Don’t get me wrong, a lot of this information is great and can get you started off on the right foot.  However, the problem with these books and advice is they make it sound like starting a business venture is pretty easy.  Some of them have a preface or a chapter on the realities of starting a business, but then they quickly skip on to other things.

If these books were being real with you, they would have an entire section on the biggest secret to success: Accountability.  A lot of people and business owners complain about their customers, employees, vendors, and anything else that they view as standing in the way of their success.  Many of these people are put off by the fact that success is not instant.  What gets you through these periods and brings you up from the lows is being accountable to yourself.  Most of the problems you encounter you know the answers to, however, statistics show that 75% of entrepreneurs don’t solve their problems and go out of business.

Don’t get me wrong, you should not feel bad for being discouraged.  But know that discouragement in entrepreneurship is common.  The media likes to concentrate on companies that were an overnight success, but the fact is those are by far the exception rather than the rule.  A quasi-competitor to us, Sky Zone, took years to build and perfect their business.  The owner had to finally get in, roll up their sleeves, and run their sole location for a number of years.  During this time, they completely changed their business model.  Now, Sky Zone is a great company with a lot going for it, but it took time and working through a lot of situations to get there.

Creating a business will take a lot of hard work, time, and accountability.  When you fail in your business (and you will), its up to you to remedy the situation.  When you need to answer emails, take control of marketing, or re-train your employees its going to be up to you to do it.  At that point, you can spend the time and be accountable to yourself and those who have invested in you or you can not do it.  You need to learn to hold yourself accountable.

In the franchising world, there is probably more accountability problems then normal.  The franchising industry has done a poor job portraying in some situations what a franchise actually is.  Franchising is not a job, it is a business that takes a real entrepreneur to succeed.  A franchisor gives you support and methods that have been successful, however, the execution is up to the franchisee.  While a franchisor helps you with a certain percentage of your business, the overall success of a business is completely up to the franchisee.

One trick to holding yourself accountable is through goal setting.  There is a bunch of information on goal setting and how to do it in a way that will work for you.  The great thing about accomplishing goals is that you grow self-esteem.  Once you have higher self-esteem, you will be able to overcome more and hold yourself even more accountable.

As you start your entrepreneurial journey or even as you are in the middle of it, think of how you will hold yourself accountable.  What things will you do to make sure that when times get tough, you are able to endure and come out ahead?

Also, take a look at our article on how to be mentally prepared to own your own business.  You can find it here: https://monkeybiznessfranchising.com/2018/07/owning-your-own-business-being-mentally-prepared/

At Monkey Bizness we have 6 giant indoor playgrounds open mainly in Colorado and Kansas.  Since I have taken over, we close a store in the Houston area.  Based on these experiences, we have a good history of knowing what works, what makes a great owner, and who has the best chance of being successful in a Monkey Bizness.  Here are three key factors we believe lead to success in our model.

Local Ownership

Some concepts can be managed from far away.  Those concepts are mainly ones where you don’t need to build a personal relationship with your customer base and you are not working closely with families.  At Monkey Bizness, our mission is to help build happy and health families in our communities.  We are big believers that active play is a critical component of child development and health.  With this sort of mission, it is important that you have a relationship with the local community.  You must be able to connect with local schools, day care centers, churches, community organizations, and other children-based businesses within the community.  This is extremely hard to do from 200 miles away. Further, customer service is paramount in this business.  We find that customer service increases the more involved the business owner is in their business.

A Passion for Customer Experience

Every business you go in has created a customer experience.  Whether they know it or not, a business has created a customer experience based on how they train their employees, the systems and policies in place, and the quality of their product.  In some businesses, this means more than others.  In Monkey Bizness and similar concepts, it is extremely important.  The customer experience starts the second a parent walks in with their child.  I often remind employees, parents are much more sensitive to our experience because they are trusting their child with us.  The customer experience continues as they play on our equipment, interact with other kids and employees, and eat food we sell.  Each of those elements must be carefully thought out.  Further, a great deal of time and effort must be put into training your employees and making sure they are fulfilling the customer experience you desired to create.

Marketing, Marketing, Marketing

Competition is not always bad.  We look for thousands of kids in the markets we are going to help a new owner open up in and we can’t possibly hold parties for all of them.  However, the competition for parent’s attention is fierce.  The good news is a lot of these business owners have no plan or strategy to market their business. Rather, they haphazardly launch a Facebook campaign or post six times a year on Instagram.  At Monkey Bizness, we give you the tools and support to both plan and execute your marketing strategy.  However, while we believe in our support and strategies, for the most part the execution is up to you.  The ultimate success of your campaigns will depend on your effort given and passion shown in your marketing efforts.

There are other traits that make for good owners, but without these three it is hard to be successful in our model.  At Monkey Bizness we want successful owners that will use their indoor playgrounds to help accomplish our shared mission of helping families be happy and healthy in our communities.  If you think this might be the right fit or you, reach out to us today to have an initial, no pressure discussion.

Request more information here.

For those of you that don’t know Gary Vaynerchuk, you’re missing out.  Gary is the type of guy that when I think about him, I immediately feel guilty because I think I should be doing more with my business.  Gary has written great books on how to market and build a brand for both yourself and your business.

I don’t want to go into detail of what Gary recommends (that what the books are for), but if you are a small business owner you should definitely read them.  While all of what he writes might not be for you, there are some basic fundamentals that he preaches that I believe are important for any business to be successful.

One task that might be inherent in what Gary writes about is the concept of planning.  When I am talking about planning, I am referring to specifically around your marketing.  The concept of planning is underlying in all of what he writes and talks about, however, I feel like it is lightly addressed in the books.

I run into a lot of small business owners and am a customer of even more.  One thing that is painfully obvious is the complete lack of planning when it comes to most marketing.  Many things are haphazardly put together and there is often not a common theme or purpose around any of it.  In my opinion, most business owners would greatly benefit from just more planning alone.  Whether their message is on point or not (which is important), planning would be a huge leap forward.  Planning is also free, it costs business owners nothing in the way of dollars.

At Monkey Bizness, for our individual stores, we have a quick planning tool that we use.  We utilize Google Sheets for this tool because the entire team can then have access to the document and edit it in real time.  Our sheet has three different tabs: weekly, monthly, and evergreen content.  Our Weekly tab is a detailed execution plan of what we will do this week on our different platforms.  We actually put on there the copy of what we will post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, our blog, and other platforms we utilize.  When we do this, it makes the daily execution of the plan simple and less time-consuming.

The Monthly tab has the current and next month on it.  We are trying to adapt Gary’s suggestion of pillar content for our stores.  What pillar content looks like for Monkey Bizness is probably different than others.  However, in general, we have a monthly theme.  Using this monthly calendar makes it easy for us to plan out how that theme will be utilized on a daily basis.  For instance, our theme this month is the benefits of active play.  Each week we have now mapped out the different benefit we will key in on and the content that we need to create for that week.  The benefit of this is we are already working on September and we can put together some awesome content now that we have time to do it rather than haphazardly throwing it together.

The last tab is our Evergreen tab.  We utilize Twitter where we know that we will be posting content repeatedly.  We use this tab to record our best performing content.  We actually do this for all of our platforms because even though we won’t repost on Instagram, if something performed well there we may use the concept again on Twitter or Facebook.

While none of this is mind-blowing, it is more planning the most other small businesses do.  Imagine how powerful your small business could be with a little planning.

And before I forget, I want to give some links to some great Gary V. resources.

His books can be found at this link.

He published a really cool slide deck around his content model and a real-life example.  That can be found at this link.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me.

At Monkey Bizness, we talk with people almost daily about their dreams and aspirations and if Monkey Bizness fits into them.  As the president of a company that sells franchises, as you would imagine, I am a big believer in the power a franchise can offer to people.  However, it’s not for everyone.  Below is a list of 4 reasons you should maybe avoid starting a franchise.

1. You Need Immediate Cash Flow

This might not be solely a reason to avoid starting a franchise, rather this is a reason to avoid starting a business altogether.  I was talking with someone last week who was in a market Monkey Bizness really wants to be in.  He mentioned to me that where they are in their life right now, his family needs both his and his wife’s income to survive.  If that is the case, I told him he should think twice about starting a business.  All those statistics you have read regarding how long it takes to pull income out of a new business are true.  Depending on the business, it will take 1 to 5 years.  However, all is not lost…..there is a solution for those that need an income but also want to be a business owner.  You can look to buy an existing business.  While the capital investment may be higher, you can often have an immediate income stream.

2. Your Stating a Business in a Field You Already Work In

There are a lot of reasons to start a franchise rather than a business on your own.  One big reason is the level of knowledge and expertise a franchisor brings to the field they are operating in.  However, if you already work in the field you want to start a business in, then I would think twice about franchising.  Let me give you an example…I am a Certified Public Accountant.  I worked in this field for 10 years and thought long and hard about starting own small practice.  There are some great franchises out there that specifically target CPAs.  Some bring some legitimate value, such as proven sales techniques and client development practices.  However, for me, I did not need that as I had worked in this field for many years and was confident in my ability to start a small firm on my own.

3. You Lack Passion for the Business

A lot of people want to start their own business.  Because of the level of support and structure a franchise provides, we talk with a lot of people who think it “might be cool to start a Monkey Bizness”.  They also freely admit they are looking at a quick service restaurant, a salon, and an e-cig store as well.  These are 4 things that have almost nothing in common.  At Monkey Bizness, we believe you need to have a passion for working with your community and families.  If you don’t have that passion, we believe that you will lack focus.  When you start to lack focus, your energy and enthusiasm for the business will decline.  From time to time that is OK, but over the long-term, your passion is what brings you back to your business.  We are big believers that you must have a passion for whatever business you are in if you want to be successful over a long period of time.

4. You Have Major Issues with the Franchise Agreement

As a franchisee, you will need to agree to a franchise agreement.  Most of these agreements have a laundry list of things you need to agree to in order to operate your franchise.  And what happens if you don’t like it and want to be your own independent business?  That is covered in there as well (hint, its probably not good).  Franchisors do this for a reason.  The franchisee fee is often not profitable and it takes considerable resources for a franchisor to help launch a new franchisee.  They also must protect the brand and their products so that other franchisees can be successful.  You will need to live with the agreement you signed for the life of your business. A lot of franchisors like Monkey Bizness take practical approaches to solve issues with franchisees.  Never the less, both the franchisor and franchisee have signed an agreement which ultimately will prevail if any serious issues should come up.  If you aren’t comfortable with that agreement, don’t sign it.