The $16K/Month Business He Runs Without Quitting His Job - Ep. #342

So you spent $100 in Facebook ads and got $10,000 in bookings?

Yes.

That's amazing. It's an infinite money glitch. Yeah.

Our highest month has been $22,500.

Wow.

And then on average, we're right at like $16,000.

Do you have employees?

No, just my wife and I.

Really? You still have a job?

Yeah.

No way.

I have 3 churches right now.

Really?

That are every Sunday.

Holy cow. That covers your rent.

Exactly. They had goat hanging from the ceiling and they were taking torches And cooking pieces of the goat.

If someone really wanted to start this business on a budget, what's the least it would take?

You could do it for under $3,000.

So my guests today rented out an empty church in a strip mall parking lot, spent a little money cleaning it up, not as much as you might think. And today, just a year later, it makes $16,000 a month, part-time, no employees, doing this on the weekend, renting it out to birthday parties, anniversaries, et cetera. Here's what I didn't expect. He spent $100 on Facebook ads that got him $10,000 worth of bookings in one day. He has 3 customers that pay him every single month that cover all of his rent, and they never even throw a party. And then he has a QR code on the wall that turns every party into 4 more parties. It's a viral referral marketing loop. Oh, and one night he came back to check in on a party and found a goat hanging from the ceiling. If you have a wife that loves to host, she's going to love this. What first gave you the idea to start a venue?

So my wife and I would do lots of events and for our kids, we have a 6 and 4-year-old. And so we would do big birthday parties and they do a fall party each year, which has grown really big, where have some kind of large activity where it's decorating pumpkins or decorating hay, something large and hayrides and that kind of stuff.

And you would rent out Other venues?

We would actually— we have a good-sized house and yard, so we would do all that in our yard. But we would rent. And then for our second child, I said, you know what, we should do somewhere else. So I started looking for venues to have a baby shower. And my wife was with me and I went to a bunch and just was not satisfied. We ended up choosing one and during that conversation and towards the tail end of COVID we said, you know what, we should do this. 'Cause we also heard about people saying they couldn't book restaurants and other stuff, but you could book venues that had laxer laws, I guess, at that point, if you just brought your family to a venue. So we said we should look into that. And so we spent about 3 years just kind of, you know, playing with the idea and looking for venues, looking for a place that would work.

Yeah.

For us. And we were really close to signing leases on like 4 venues until we found the one we're at now. So we— so yeah, it was just— we thought we could do— and then after hosting her baby shower at that venue, at that venue, and the price I paid just for the venue—

What'd you pay?

I think I paid like $2,200.

Okay.

And I still had to come in and decorate with friends. That was—

For like an afternoon?

Yeah, it was. It was a Sunday from like 11 to 6 p.m. and we probably weren't even there to 6. And so it was a brunch. So I hired a chef and they did like the omelet stations and, and all the other stuff and hired— not only hired the chefs, but also hired the— hired a team to come decorate with myself. So on top of the $2,200, I probably spent another $2,000 to probably $2,000 to $3,000 on everything else.

Yeah.

And they're like, wow, we That we could have— we could have done a better job, we thought. And no slight to them, but it wasn't a huge venue.

What type of venue?

It was in a strip mall and was probably about 1,200 square feet. It's like a narrow—

Like a retail.

Like a retail space. And it was pretty narrow. And I think we hosted 60 people. And then we said, you know what, we could do this for the price I paid. I was like, We could definitely do this.

I mean, I used to rent 1,200-square-foot retail spaces for my iPhone repair store, and you're looking at like $2,000 to $4,000 a month.

Yeah.

So you're thinking, wow, they just made their whole payment in one afternoon.

Exactly. Exactly. From, from, yeah, from just our booking.

Yeah.

And so we started looking around, and the one thing that did say— make one of the things that made me say we can do this, Then we just intentionally started shopping venues, taking a tour, sitting with them. And I would go into all these places and they would say, all right, what date do we want? And they'd say, you know, I want October 10th. They said, come on back to the office. And they dust off their desk and they have the large old school file calendars.

Yeah.

She's like going through and say, okay, yep, I got you on the 12th. We have that available. I'm gonna write— I'm gonna take my yellow highlighter. Yeah. And when you book it, I'll come back with my red highlighter.

Most low tech.

Yeah. And so I said to my wife, you know, I've, I've been a technical PM for a lot and I've got an interest in technology anyway. I was like, this could be so much easier than, than they make it. And, and why is no one doing it this way?

Yeah.

And so that really got the gears turning and then we, we found a place. Okay.

Essentially, what types of places did you start shopping for?

Retail standalone. What I tell people now, if anybody's interested, you know, don't fall in love with the property. You got to see what— you can have the most beautiful property that has horrible parking.

Parking.

So it's all about parking. Yeah, it's a lot about parking because there's some spaces that were in downtown Atlanta that were beautiful and we were wondering why the rent was so cheap. But it's because that it maybe 2,000, 3,000 square feet, good size, but you can't park there.

Yeah.

Or you have to direct people to a parking deck that's $25. Yeah.

So sometimes they're not even walkable areas either.

Yeah.

If it's a walkable area, then you don't really need parking.

But yeah. And a lot of them weren't. Yeah. So that and speaking to landlords, a lot of landlords did not want event venues, maybe because of the parking or just the liability.

A bunch of people, liability, people.

Um, that, that was— I was surprised. It was so many spaces that we liked that they came back, said, well, sorry, you want to do— because they'd ask for your business plan or what you're going to do, and they would say, sorry, we, we, we— nice to meet you, but we can't, we can't do event space in here. Wow. So, you know, we continued to shop and we eventually found one. It was in a retail plaza, but it was a church.

Oh, interesting. And standalone? No, no, I guess in a retail.

Yeah.

Okay.

And it was a church.

And how many square feet?

Uh, 3,000.

Okay. And they were moving? Yeah.

So what happened is they, they were building a convenience store across the street and in, uh, same owners as the thing. And so as the plaza. And in Georgia, there's some laws that you can't have a daycare or a church within 500 yards Of somewhere that sells liquor. And because the convenience store is, you know, $12,000 a month rental property, they told the church like, hey, your lease is ending. So I'm—

The owner had to choose.

Yeah, owner had to choose. Yeah. And he chose to— chose the convenience store. So we just happened to be peeking in the window and someone from church was inside working, came out And said, "Hey, would you like to take a look around?" And she literally gave us a tour. We told her what we were doing. She's like, "Oh, I'm gonna put in a word for you to the owner." She's like, "Unfortunately, we have to go, but we found a new we found a new venue. So so we're good." Huh. And that ended up being three thousand.

Three thousand. And it's perfect because it's basically already an event venue.

Yeah.

But it's not. It's different types of events.

Different types of events. So it still took a lot of work. They had carpet. inside, things that weren't, you know, suitable for weekly events.

What city was this in?

Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Oh, I know where the big Stone Mountain is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right next to the city. I used to go there every summer. Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

On the way up to wrestling camp.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, right in Stone Mountain. So right, you know, close, 8 miles from the city. Still, you know, still great location.

Okay. So 3,000 square feet. Give me, give me an idea of what types of businesses were at that intersection. Like what type, what part of town is this?

So it's a town that— it's Stone Lake, but now it's— we may be actually annexed into a little town called Pine Lake.

Okay.

So the Pine Lake Post Office is next door, Pine Lake Police Department. Across the street is the actual Pine Lake. Can't see it from our venue, but there's a lake. It's not a huge lake, but, you know, it's a lake. So there's people that live on Pine Lake. So we had those people. There was a Family Dollar, I believe, next door.

Okay.

And the venue that we went into, or the plaza, was pretty much empty when we took it.

Oh, that's— which is usually not a good sign.

No.

Lots of parking.

Lots of parking.

But also—

170 spots, I believe. Wow.

There's going to be less parking once there are more tenants.

Yes. So we had to— we had to submit a, a business plan and give a full detail to the owners of the building. And they said, wow, this is really good. And so we signed the lease, but lo and behold to us, they started targeting other event places or event venues because they thought that was a good thing to bring into their plaza.

Wait, but you had already signed the lease?

We had signed the lease. Nothing was in our lease that said you could not have another event venue.

Was that a regret?

Yes. So, um, at one point in time, we've been there since 2024.

Okay.

At one point in time, at the end of 2024, there was 5 venues.

And what?

Yeah.

In the same shopping center?

Same shopping center. So they had moved in 4 others besides us.

And none of them had non-competes in their lease?

No.

That's crazy that not one of them was like, not one.

Hey. Yeah. And so it was weird. We would see people moving in. Hey, what do you— what are you guys doing? And we had one occasion where they're like, we don't want to tell you. And we realized because they were Felt they were in competition with us, but there's no one there now. It's just us. So we've outlasted all of them.

What month in 2024 did you launch?

So we signed our lease in like August. Okay.

So 2 years ago.

Yeah.

And then when were you open?

November of 2025. Wow.

It took that long?

Took that long.

So you had to pay rent that whole time?

We, we, we, We had about 6 months free rent.

Okay.

So we negotiated a pretty good deal. We went into it thinking that we could do the reconstruction a little bit faster than we did. And that's our, that's our biggest regret. And being cheap— well, not even cheap, just what we could afford. I did most of it myself.

Yeah.

So nights and weekends, I still was working a regular 9 to 5. So nights and weekends I'd be in there changing ceilings. We put up a new entry wall, we changed the bathrooms.

Do you have skills in this or?

Have— I can follow. I can follow. Yeah, I can follow good direction. So YouTube University.

Let me be clear. So like you've been open less than a year, right? Yes. We'll get to your numbers in a minute. But the only thing you were working on is we like doing events. Seems like they make a lot of money. Seems like they're old school and we can be— we can have better technology. That's kind of what you're working with. You still don't kind of know. You're kind of hoping, praying if we build this, they will come. Is that right?

That is. And we started putting very little marketing, but a little bit of marketing out there just to see and test. And so we— our official grand opening was November of 2025, but we did some events. We maybe did 10 events that prior year and we learned from each of those. And some of those weren't even profitable. Like we gave somebody a full wedding and reception for $3,500.

Yeah.

And I still see them posting the pictures saying the most amazing wedding ever. And we, and so we learned from that. That helped us gear our pricing structure to what it is now.

How did you have 10 events before you were done?

Because it just, it wasn't perfect, but it was suitable. Like once we had new tile floors in, once the bathrooms were done, once the walls were painted, we made, we didn't have an entry wall. But it was good enough.

Yeah.

And we would shop it to people saying— we didn't shop it enough, but we shopped it a little bit. We said, hey, come take a tour. We're not 100%, but this is what you get.

The price isn't 100% either.

And this is why you're getting such a great price. So we did about 10 of those events and we were probably— we could have probably did 50 of those events, but we were scared to take them. And Both of us are slight perfectionists, and you know, eventually once we got to November, like look, we we have to do. We can't. We're losing.

Rip the bandaid off.

Yeah, we're losing so much money because we're paying rent in this empty building essentially.

What was your rent?

About three thousand.

Three thousand a month. Yeah. Okay, which is not bad. I mean, no, no. Ten bucks a foot.

Yeah, yeah.

Now where did you find these ten customers?

Instagram.

Essentially posting organically.

Just posting organically. And they came to us, no paid marketing or paid media.

Is this on a new Instagram page for the venue or your page or your wife's page?

New for the venue.

Okay.

Yeah.

Do you guys have experience with Instagram, like organic content?

Just my own. But I started converting people over to the new page as well.

Okay. So you start a brand new Instagram page and you're just doing like vertical videos, like here's our venue, or were you doing like build in public? Like watch me build this event.

You, a little bit of both. So what I learned from my studio 10 years ago, that we were the best kept secret and no one knew about us because I didn't want to share it until I thought it was perfect.

And that's out of like insecurity.

Yeah.

Fear. Right. Which is not a good place to make decisions from.

No, it's horrible. And even though we did a better job, we didn't do the best job. But it was a lot of— and I started realizing Videos of us pulling up carpet or my kids in there with paintbrushes outperformed all the other, still outperform other stuff that we do today where we pay people to do stuff. So yeah, so we realized that, you know, we're building. This is like we started with us, the key signing, and, and it was also none of our friends knew. I don't think our parents knew we had been kind of working on this and Secrets of Arabi found out at the same time. Well, you guys. Acquired a space. So then, but they knew us as always throwing parties, but they're like, oh, that's great. So, so those, those organic things is what helped. So we'd have people and then we didn't have, we didn't have pricing. I think when the first person reached out to us, they're like, hey, so how much is it? Yeah, exactly.

I'm surprised you reached out so soon.

Yeah. So, you know, we should have doubled down on that.

Yeah.

And we should have said, look, we'll rent you the unfinished venue.

Yeah.

And that would have paid for, in hindsight, that would have paid for, and we could have moved faster.

Yeah.

But, you know.

Is it safe to say that you posting about the venue in this neighborhood kind of grew the market? Like there were people that were gonna have events anyway, but they were probably gonna do it at a friend's house or something. And when they saw your post, it kind of pushed them over the edge.

Yeah.

You know what? Maybe we should just get a place. Is that accurate?

I think so.

You grow the market by posting.

Yeah, because one thing, even with paid promotion, I've said, look, we should be superstars in our neighborhood. There's, there's, so with, there's 7,000 single-family homes within 3 miles of our venue. So like all of our paid needs, everybody, they need to, my goal is when I'm pumping gas, people say, hey, Justin, do you, do you own the Do you own the hall? And that's what we really targeted because a lot of people still come to us like, hey, I never knew you were here. We get that every day. And so then even when our signage changed outside, the big 8-foot neon sign above the— 8-foot long above our sign, and the windows all have, say, the hall in the windows now. And we're pressing to help, pressing now to get our landlord to paint the actual brick. If we can get that, I think that'll really change. Of the whole building?

Of the whole facade.

And so, But that presence there, especially in a building where nobody's doing anything. So now those other venues are gone.

All of them?

All those other venues are gone.

You plus 4 or you plus 5?

Us plus 4. So there was 5 total.

In like the first 3 months?

Yep.

So he just went hard.

Yeah.

I'm assuming he's recollecting a conversation you must have had. We're like, man, this place is perfect for a venue.

Yeah.

Ooh, is it now? Is that kind of what happened?

I believe that's definitely what happened.

Oh man.

But you know, it wasn't— it, for whatever reason, that didn't bother me. Like, I still said we're gonna run our own race. And I thought that— and also I would talk to those venues and they would be like, yeah, I don't do Facebook. Like, that's not gonna— it's word of mouth, Justin.

Was it mostly like existing venue businesses moving there, or was it people like you starting from scratch?

People like me starting from scratch.

That's crazy. There would be that much— that many people starting Yeah. Event venue.

And now one of the women had a dance studio, and so she would have dance studio during the day and then people would rent her blank studio at night for events.

Yeah.

So she moved to our spaces. She had an existing dance business.

Okay.

And she moved to a bigger space thinking she could do more events.

Yeah.

But it just wasn't actually with her, unfortunately. Didn't do the right paperwork, you know, didn't have occupancy and that stuff. And she actually had a large party in there one night and police shut her down. They say, you know, you're violating fire code and all that stuff. So, you know, and that was, that was another thing too that took us a long time too, is it took 6 months just to get our fire code inspection and so, and get our occupancy.

How could you have avoided that?

I don't know if we could have. I will say after 3 months of waiting, even I tried to at least be in their office 1 to 2 times a week. And that was difficult, my schedule. I would have went every day if I could have. And finally they just got tired of me.

Yeah.

City or DeKalb County was like, okay, let's— can we just help this guy out? And it was some miscommunication. We were told we didn't need an entertainment license because we weren't serving food and people were actually renting from us. And then, but It really did require entertainment license. So I took good notes. I wasn't trying to get anybody in trouble. I was able to direct them to who told me didn't, and that person actually admitted. So you know, I was that was my second day on the job. I didn't know we didn't need this, but that one not needing that sent us back four months because then the clock restarts twelve grand on everything. Yeah, so it was very expensive. But I started going down there and saying, "Hey, can I speak to the commissioner?" Started bringing muffins. And I just, to the point where like one of the commissioners like, hey, let me just drive over there with you now and see if I can get somebody. Because I was like, I'll just— it's like, you guys are costing me thousands of dollars a month. So yeah, I need to— you need to know my name.

Yeah.

And eventually that got it through and I have a good relationship with them now. So when it's time now, when we renew each year, it goes pretty fast.

Yeah.

But yeah, that, that was the biggest thing.

How did all of those competitors survive? Like, did they have to break their lease, or—

Sure, they broke their lease to leave because, yeah, they had to because we're all in 3 to 5 year leases and they had to break it to leave. But they also, a lot of them I, I know for a fact didn't— weren't doing the right paperwork stuff, um, which to me was always vital, um, and I don't think they expected some of the other expenses that Come along with it.

Yeah.

And they just, I don't think they were good operators. They just, they, none of them, they were all stuck on word of mouth. None of them. And they didn't do the, there, there was one that's was next door to us. Now that's actually a gym, which is good. I like having a gym there. But, um, they were almost 4,000 square feet. And so, but they, they put in bright red industrial carpet. Oh, they had, you know, like the old school church padded chairs that you have and the church tables. It looked like a church.

Yeah.

When you went in there. And I— and then I didn't think that was business. And, and so the owner had a thing. He's like, it's great you guys can all work together because if somebody's busy, they send business the other way. And I was like, it doesn't It doesn't work that way.

Don't even talk to me.

Yeah. So, but I would go into them and then eventually they started coming to us and like, wow, your place looks nothing like ours. And the other ones, they just painted the walls. They did nothing. Cement floor, paint the walls. And we had, you know, we're big on tech, so we have screens on the outside of the building, screens inside. We have a 10 by 16 LED wall in the main hall. So they would come to us and realize we weren't Running the same race.

Yeah.

Either.

Okay. So you said from the time you signed the lease, the time you opened, you could have had up to 50 customers, events if you wanted. That's all from just organic.

That was all from organic.

Did you have anything like going viral or was it just the right people viewing your content?

I think it was the right people, you know, and engagement. We tried to engage, you know, engagement, the right people, the right engagement. And we did a few Like booths? Like, like, uh, no, we did a few like community events.

Okay.

Where we would like, at my daughter's private school, we, we got like 3 parents. We just sat out there, a booth, and handed out flyers. Said, hey, if you don't know, we have a, we have an event venue right down the street. And it was a lot of that. And people just didn't, just didn't know we existed.

Yeah.

There'd be a little community, like some of the farmers markets would have days where if you weren't selling produce, you could come pitch your other idea. So we would do that. I would go to the South DeKalb or the DeKalb Chamber of Commerce, their business meetings that they'd have on Tuesday where it was just networking and everybody's like, oh, didn't know you were here. And we had really great prices at that point. So we got a lot of interest just Just from that. And then once we hit November and did— said, look, we're not done. We still wanted a wall and some other things, but we said, we gotta go. So we did a full scale, then we ramped up the paid social. And then we were, we were doing tours 6 days a week. Wow.

From paid ads on Instagram?

From paid ads, yeah.

Facebook and Instagram?

Yeah. Facebook and Instagram.

What were your ads like? What did they look like?

At first they were just stagnant pictures of a post 'cause we were running, Specials like our— we have a gold package that comes with a lot of decor. That package is now, I think we sell it for $2,800, which is still a great deal.

For one day?

For, yeah, 6-hour block.

Okay.

We were doing that for $1,000.

Okay.

And I think I booked like 10 of them in a day.

Whoa.

Because it was such a great price.

But still profitable for you.

Still profitable. Still, we need the cash, so it works.

So $10,000 in a day. In bookings, obviously it's going to take 5 to 10 days for all of those to be used, but how much in ad spend would it cost to get 10 like that?

That was, that was less than $100 in ad spend.

Yeah. So spent $100 in Facebook ads and got $10,000 in bookings.

Yes.

That's wild.

Yeah.

Were you like geofencing the ads to only show to people in that area? We—

and what we found we did wrong is we were actually all of Atlanta. We were doing 22 miles out of us to catch Atlanta, Sandy Springs, Marietta. We were trying to catch everybody.

Atlanta's right there. Yeah, why not? But since you've learned—

Now we've learned just focus on, you know, our, our zip, our immediate 5 to 7 miles.

5 to 7, that's the sweet spot.

Yeah, that's the sweet spot.

Okay. Do you live in Stone Mountain?

I do.

So you're like a local?

Yeah, I live about My, my, I'm 4 minutes away from the vet.

Okay. Okay. How much did it cost you to build it out?

Say it was, it was in the $20,000 range.

That's it? Yeah. $20,000 to $30,000.

Like, like almost $30,000.

I'm shocked. I thought you were going to say $100,000 at least.

No, like $30,000.

3,000 square feet. Tell me what all you did. So you painted it?

Painted it, new floors.

Ripped out the old floor.

Floors are the most expensive thing.

Tile?

Yeah. LVT.

Okay.

Like luxury vinyl tile.

Okay.

Yeah. We redid the stage. There was a stage there, so we had carpet on it, ripped that off, put— I wish we would have like Malolite or one of those staging things, but we went with a dark wood, with real, real wood stage. It looks nice, but I think I would do something different in the future. Redid the bathrooms, tile in all the bathrooms, the LED screen Security cameras and stuff. Cameras, cameras, security system, created a prep kitchen. We can't cook on premise, but we have commercial warmers that you could slide your trays in. Commercial warmers, added sinks to that prep area and like stainless steel countertops, that kind of thing.

If you did, if you were able to cook on premise, do you think you'd make more money? Or is it not that?

I don't know. But my— the difference in insurance you pay when—

Fire hazard.

Fire. Yeah. Because it's— you're like a restaurant at that point. I don't think for the difference I'd pay in insurance, I don't think it would value.

Juice isn't worth the squeeze.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But we do get asked that a lot. But we tell people, if, you know, most caterers just bring their hot trays anyway.

Right.

And we have the commercial warmers. Stick them in, keeps them to the temperature warmer that you needed. And then we— I built a big chafing cart buffet that lights from below.

Oh, cool.

And so people drop their trays in there. And those are also— I built the DJ booth, I built the chafing table, I built the bar. Those videos were great. You know, come with me as I go to Home Depot and build a DJ. Those were great organic videos. All of those I don't want to say viral, but all those did very well.

Yeah.

On building stuff for the space.

If you were to list out like the top 5 types of events you have, what would be number 1 through 5?

One, one would be birthday parties.

Okay. What, what age?

We do a lot of that 50 through 70.

Really? Yeah. Okay.

And I think that's just because of our area too. Seems to be we get older clientele. And I'm happy to have that because—

They have money.

Yeah, they have money. And I don't know if I really want to do too many 21-year-old birthday parties either. Just for the liability. Yeah, just for the liability and stuff. So, but yeah, we do a lot of like that. 50 to 70 seems to be the sweet spot.

And they're doing like 50-year birthday parties, 60-year.

50, 55.

Okay.

And with some of our now male Our direct mail marketing, we're able to pull birthdays. So because it has the driver's license information, we pull it. So I target—

EDDM? Every Door Direct Mail?

Yeah.

Okay.

And I— and so now I target 3 months out to that milestone birthday. So if you turn 55 in January, I'm going to start hitting you now so I can touch you 3 times before your birthday.

Do you have any numbers on what the return on investment is on the direct mail on that strategy?

On that strategy? Not yet. I just started doing it.

But it works.

But I've we've been getting people to come in. So I know it works.

It's like 30, 50 cents per postcard?

Yeah, yeah, it's like 50.

And you know exactly who you're sending it to?

Exactly. And it's just, the thing is you have to touch them though 3 times. That's where it starts getting a little pricey.

People send one and they check a box and they're like, why didn't I get results? It doesn't work.

It doesn't work, yeah. You gotta send one. That's not how it works. And so I think now what we're gonna do too is we're starting to design our own birthday cards at the hall. And we're going to— now we're going to send those for the 3-month-out people.

Yeah.

Say, we're just catching you early. Happy birthday.

Yeah.

Hope to see you at the hall. And so we have been getting people like, hey, I got this. I didn't know that you're— I live in the neighborhood right behind you. Didn't know you were here. And I pass by this every day. I didn't know what the hall meant when I saw the sign. So, yeah, so that, that's been a great strategy.

So what is a birthday worth to you? Give me a breakdown of like an average birthday revenue and profit and then like a birthday with upsells revenue.

So our average, our average intake is about 1,800 per party.

6 hours?

6 hours. And I— 6, uh, we, you know, we're, we're juggling between 6 and 8, but I like 6 because when people say 6 is not enough time for me to come in and decorate, I said, well, great, that's why you need to step up to one of our packages where we can do the decor. But when people do decorate, usually they come in an hour before, hour to 2.

Before the 6 hours?

Yeah. No, no. Hour to 2 during the 6 hours. So your party would be from 6 to midnight.

Okay.

You'd come in from 6 to 8, decorate. Your party starts at 8, usually done by 11 or 12 to break down.

Okay. And $1,800 for something like that?

Yeah. And many, many moons ago, I was a DJ and most parties, people really only party party for 3 to 4 hours.

Yeah.

People say, oh, we need 10 hours. Like nobody's going that long. Yeah. Yeah. DJ don't even have music to last you that. Long. So we find that 6 hours, because that gives them 4 hours to just truly party.

Yep.

And that seems to be the sweet spot.

What about a 6-hour party with upsells? What does that run?

So our basic package is our blank canvas, which is just $1,000.

Okay.

And so that's just tables and chairs.

In addition to the $1,800?

No, I'm saying our average, our average party is $1,800.

Okay.

But our base price is $4,000.

That's as cheap as it can be.

That's as cheap as it can be.

Okay.

And so what we find is upsells will be the screens. So that's the biggest upsell. If you get just the blank canvas package, most people come in and they want the screens on because usually we're running something or running a slideshow and saying, this is what your party could look like.

Mm-hmm.

They want linen, you know, tablecloths, napkins, chargers, tablescapes for the actual table. Balloons, that kind of thing.

Do you store all that stuff on site or not?

Unfortunately, yes. I need to get some storage. So it's also allowed me bringing stuff from my house to there.

Yeah.

So, and my wife does— my wife was an interior designer once upon a time, so she does all of that. So we try to move people towards the package. So if you do a $2,800 package or a $4,000 package, you're going to get all that. You just have to show up with your food.

Yeah.

And we've really even been working with some of our caterers that are on our preferred vendors list to see how can we have food packages even, because what we find the biggest thing, people don't want to think about it. They want to show up and party.

Yeah.

And we want them to. We want to— we're selling convenience.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's— we're not selling space. We're selling convenience. And so—

Do you find you get customers from people that come to events? You know what I'm saying?

We do. And I market to them.

It's like inbound, like it's like a, it's like a built-in viral marketing.

So one thing we haven't discussed, part of one of my favorite tools in the venue is we use a thing called Instant Spotlight from a small company called Astarte that started working with us 2 years ago. Right now we're the only company or venue in Georgia with this, but on our LED wall, we have a thing that we call instant spotlight with the hall. So on the outside, when you walk into our building, there's 40-inch screens on each pillar. When you walk in, there's a QR code on those. There's ones on the tables, one in there. And we tell your guests, look, your party starts outside. Scan the QR code. So throughout the night, every time they say happy birthday, Aunt Sarah, or they do a video or they take a selfie, those pictures show up all throughout the building.

Mm-hmm.

And people go crazy over that. People love being able to take a selfie and it show up and then the party—

Capturing that data.

Yes. So they have to, you know, of course their phone number, email. And so that all goes into my funnel system. And then also, if you did 40 pictures, if you took 40 pictures throughout the night, I'm assuming you had a good time. And so that helps me market to those people. And then also our Google is all automated. So, hey, did you have a good, good time? We would love that. So we send everybody the the gallery at the end of the night. So if they took 200 pictures, everybody that took a picture is going to get all 200 and said, hey, it looks like you had a great time at On Sarah's Birthday. If you did, we'd love for you to give the hall 5 stars. They give 5 stars, shows up on Google. If they give less than 4, I actually— it comes back to me in email and I can address it. But the biggest part is that's the largest funnel I have now. So if your party has 120 people and 60 of them take photos, That's now information I can use.

Yeah.

As my lead.

And you have, you have any math on of those 60 people, how many will book their own event?

So right now my latest numbers is about, is about 8% of those people have, have booked stuff. No, I think we could get it higher.

So if you have 120 people at an event, half of them upload pictures, 8% of those end up booking an event.

That's what we've had. So 8% of that, that's like an infinite money glitch. Like 4 people. Yeah. From each thing. So that's, that's been great. And I think we can even get that number higher with, with the, um—

That's amazing.

Yeah.

It's just, it's just, it's an infinite money glitch.

Yeah. And, and, and we, we've, we've loved it and it's a value add. Um, it is an upcharge to get that.

I was gonna ask. So you're charging them to get marketed to? Yeah.

It goes up. But if you get one of our packages, we throw it in.

Sure.

But if you just get the blank, we upcharge you for the screens.

Okay.

And also the birthday girl or birthday person, we say, hey, what's your Cash App? And they— or Zelle or Venmo or whatever, they give it to us. And so as they upload pictures and you put in your information, upload picture, when you hit submit your pictures, also a tab that says, hey, you want to tip the birthday girl?

Yeah.

So if they tip the birthday girl $10, then across the screen it says Aunt Jessica just tipped Sarah $20.

Oh, wow.

So then it gets everybody else to say— everybody else say, oh, well, Sarah tipped $20. That is brilliant.

I got to do $30.

And of course, the guest of honor loves that feature.

Yeah.

But even if you weren't going to take a picture, it still gets you to log into the system to try to tip the birthday person.

So you see a correlation between the event attendee that uploads more pictures and the likelihood that they're going to book their own?

Yes, I have seen that. So the likely— the person that uploaded 40, 50, 60 pictures, they had— they had the good time and they liked seeing themselves on the screen. They were clearly paying attention to, oh, there are my pictures, because then you get pictures that aren't even from the event. Yeah, people are posting baby pictures of Aunt Sarah and just uploading them because they had them on their phone. And there's a correlation of that person had a better time than the person that did zero pictures.

Right. How expensive does a 6-hour event get if you sell them everything you've got?

The— for just the party would be $4,000.

Okay.

That, that's everything we got. Now, there would be some possible upcharges, but at that point we've given you everything.

Yeah.

You're just showing up with food.

And what's your profit on like a $4,000 event versus a $1,000 event?

So on a $1,000, it's essentially whatever my marketing went into to maybe get that person. It would vary, but essentially that's almost all profit because they're going to tell me where they want the tables and I'm there. Do you set up the tables yourself? I do. If they say we want 4 on each side, we want a dance floor in the middle, then I'll do that.

Yeah. How do they get in? You just have like a key code?

Oh, I'm there. I'm there. So we're still working on that, but I'm there for every event. I like being there to touch in the beginning and then come back at the end because we have a checklist to say, look, can't do this, can't burn candles, can't do this. I need you to sign this. Then I need to come back and assure that they—

No holes in the drywall.

No holes in drywall, no TVs ripped off the screen, you know?

Yeah.

All the weird things that could happen.

What kind of stuff like that have you had?

The strangest thing we've had lately is, and it was my fault, we have the screens in our venue. We have, we just moved into another venue now, which has smaller screens. I left the remotes in the back and during, they didn't pay for anything. So I showed them we have Bluetooth speakers, large speakers. They said, look, we don't want a DJ. We just want speakers. And they said, can we get YouTube on the screens? I said, no, you can't, but that's why you have the speakers. We designed whatever image was on the screen. Anyways, I'm sitting at home and I was like, get a notification. Thank you for your YouTube Music subscription. So then I turn on the cameras and I did leave the remote. That was my fault. But they so ordered a year subscription of YouTube Music.

On you?

On me, because my card is attached to the— gosh, card is attached to the digital stuff in the back.

So selfish.

Yeah. That's like, so we've had that. That was only a couple of weeks ago. So—

Did you charge him for it?

Yeah, I went, I was, I didn't charge him everything because it was like $112 for the year. Google was kind enough to refund to, I explained what happened. They took the charge off. We say no burning of anything open. We had an event. I left. I came back an hour into the event to make sure it was going good. This was in the early days. And they had a— they had a— it was either a lamb or a goat hanging from the ceiling, like, and they were taking torches and cooking pieces of the goat.

It's like a cultural thing?

Yeah, it was a cultural thing. And, uh, they—

on—

and I was like, what are you guys doing? You can't— A for A's, no open flame.

Was it like skinned and gutted? It was like— it was like ready to Prepared?

Yeah, it was ready to prepare to eat. It was skinned and gutted. They had all of our gut, all the guts in just a regular one of our rolling trash cans with no bag in it. Oh, and they knocked over the trash can on their way out the door.

On purpose?

No, on accident. But I had blood in my tile on the front out. So that was, that's the worst experience.

So they apologize?

Like, not really. They're like, oh, we didn't know we could do this.

And so I didn't know I could hang a goat from your ceiling and knock its guts everywhere and try to roast it. Yeah.

And so, yeah, so there's a couple deposits we've had to keep, which is massive. People have spilled like lemonade, stuff like that, which is the worst. And then your floor is super sticky. But so we've had to keep deposits, but like the goat stuff. And we realized, and now it's cultural because we do— the area we live in has a strong Ethiopian, Somalian, Eritrean, just East African population. So now I've had to say, look, I know this is a thing. Yeah, because I've talked to other event venues and they've told me the same exact thing. And we were comparing pictures and they're like, oh yeah, I had a guy hang a cow. And so I had to say, look, you can't do this. Sorry, I'm not trying. And, you know, I try to do it with baby gloves because, you know, not everybody— You gotta be respectful. You gotta be respectful. And I don't want them to just assume that I think Yeah, every Ethiopian family's got to hang a cow, right? But, um, but I— it— we've had to add it to our contract.

So that's a no-win situation. Yeah, if you say it, you could offend them. If you don't say it, you might have a dead goat.

So, well, now I say it in the contract and say, please read over your contract. And if you haven't read over that and I see it, then I can come do it. Yeah, so that, that's the— that's— and then we found there's, there's cultural things where some cultures are upset that You want them to take out the trash.

Yeah.

And stuff. And because we've had cultures where the women do all the cleaning and I've got there like wrap up the end of night and there's all this trash and it's the 80-year-old grandma says, well, I can't lift the trash. I said, well, there's 7 guys over there. They're like, well, they don't touch trash. So, so, so then it's things. Then I have to go say, hey, I don't want to keep your deposit, sir, but you got 12 able-bodied men here.

Yeah.

I need you guys to take out the trash.

Come on. Oh my God.

So they— the women either can or don't want to say it. So I've learned from those things because that's, that's a real relevant thing that happens at a lot of parties.

Yeah.

And I have to say, look, I know maybe cultural, you have the young ladies that are, that are supposed to clean up, but I need one.

Yeah.

Or I got to keep your deposit.

How much is the deposit?

$350.

For everyone?

For everyone.

So like with the goat incident, you kept the deposit there?

Yeah.

And did they understand it?

They did.

You probably don't want to keep deposits.

No, I don't.

Leaves a bad taste.

Yeah, I don't. I don't at all. I tried to.

Yes, I made $350.

I try to do everything to not. Yeah, because then I'm losing, probably losing a customer. And we've found with our, our especially we have a large Mexican population south of us. We have a large East African population. But I found my East African populations like We, we, from one bridal shower we've done, we've booked like 10 events from that same community. And, and unfortunately, sometimes they call us last minute. We had one 2 weekends ago. They called us on Wednesday night and said, hey, we need a full party on Friday. We're like, okay, well, we'll make it work. Yeah, but they stick with us. And we— and now even in my marketing, I have some marketing that solely is Somalian marketing.

Interesting.

I have some marketing that's solely—

Smart.

Ethiopian.

Facebook ads?

Yeah, yeah. And even through flyers and things that we hand out, but on Instagram ads.

Yeah.

I find that with East African communication, Facebook does way better than Instagram.

Okay.

And so maybe it's just more, you know, more eyeballs on Facebook than Instagram.

Right.

Instagram does a lot better with our younger crowds, people celebrating the 25th, 30th, and weddings. Weddings do great on Instagram.

Okay. So your percentage profit is about the same on a $4,000 versus $1,000 event because your cost is like the overhead. You got your power bill, your internet, your utilities, $3,000 a month rent. You've already paid for all the chairs and tables up front. So you need to acquire the customer. Let's say it costs $100.

Yeah.

What are your costs in a $4,000?

So in the $4,000, we offer step and repeats. So, you know, the large banners, you ever see like a premiere of a movie and the stars or celebrities are standing in front of like a large vinyl sign that has advertisement stuff? So we do step and repeats because sometimes they want their name or birthday girl, those things. So that, that costs money.

So you get that printed for them?

Yeah, we get them printed for them.

You design, you work with the printer.

And Unfortunately, now I've kind of become a design guy because people don't know what they want.

Yeah.

Luckily, chat is able to handle a lot of that legwork for me. But their designs, they also get standees, like standing cutouts. They want like 6-foot cardboard cutouts of themselves. Those are big upsells. Balloons. Balloons are pricey. People don't think they are. But if you want true balloons, like the balloons you see at events, they're not the dollar store Walmart balloons. We have a balloon vendor.

Okay.

So those, you know, balloons for an event can be $200.

So your percentage profit is higher on the $1,000 event?

Yes.

Because they're just using table and chairs that you bought years ago.

Yes.

So $4,000, how much profit do you make on a $4,000 event?

About, about $3,200.

Wow. Better than I would have thought.

Yeah.

Okay. So 70%.

Yeah.

And then 90-ish percent on a $1,000 event?

About 90-ish. Yeah.

And then ranges from 90 to 70, anywhere between $1,000 and $4,000?

Yeah. Okay. And we also now we're targeting weddings. Okay. So our wedding package is $7,000.

Wow.

So we've done 2 of those.

Okay.

And we still feel like we're a great price for— for weddings.

That's 6 hours. Yeah.

Now weddings, all complete day because it's so much legwork goes into it. You can't get the day.

Are you trying to do 2 events a day? Like, is that a full day?

That's my goal. I try to. We don't do a lot of that. We try to. Okay. Now we have the weddings. That was, of course, a whole day. And now we acquired the space next door to us. Oh, you rented it last month?

How many square feet is that?

That's only 1,100, 1,300.

So you're 4,300 now square feet? Yes. Wow.

And we may— and there's a space in between us, which is weird. And now that tenant has left. So our goal is to acquire that.

How many can you comfortably fit in 4,300?

So with tables and chairs? Oh, well, we only use one at a time, so With tables and chairs in our 43— at our 30— our 3,000 square foot. Yeah, we try to keep it to 120. We could sometimes do 150, but if you want 150, that means you can't get a dance floor.

Okay.

It just depends on your event. So people that have a large, like a repass, like a memorial service, they're not dancing there. So you could do a lot more tables.

Yeah, seats.

But if it's a graduation or a birthday party, try to keep to 120-ish because we can leave the middle open for your dance floor. And still have adequate room. And we don't want to put 10 people at a table because one thing I track is when there's more people at our table, our reviews are not as good and people don't have as good of a time.

Interesting.

Because they feel like they're squished. Squished.

Yeah.

So when you do 8 at a table, that seems to be the sweet spot.

Okay.

So I try to, try to stay there.

So we're talking like 25 square feet per person, give or take?

Yeah.

Okay.

Something like that. Yeah. Okay.

Okay.

And so then in the new space, if you're doing tables and chairs, we try to keep it to 60. But when we've done weddings, the beauty of now is doing that is we could do 100, 120, like theater style, just in the chairs and still aisle for the bride. So now we can have the ceremony there and move the reception next door to the bigger space. Because what we were doing is we had a couple of weddings in the smaller space And then we would tent the outdoor area, move everybody out, flip the room, move everybody outside for a cocktail hour, flip the room.

Yeah.

And bring them back in. And we were doing all that for like $3,500, which was killing us because then we had to hire staff.

Right.

And other things. So, but now with the new weddings, we're— we haven't started marketing that yet. So I'm interested to see. We have people that have just knew us and asked us, would you? Do that. Um, but I think now once we, we've actually hired somebody too that just focuses on wedding marketing.

Yeah.

And I think that's going to really be a great uptick going into this year.

Are you on like Peerspace or The Knot, Zola? Are you listening?

We're on there. We're listed on there, but we don't pay them because, um, they want a lot. They want a lot. To me, it's not worth it. I could take those same bucks and do better on, uh, Meta. Yeah, Meta. Yeah, it's not And now we've hired a wedding consultant. Fee was kind of pricey, but I'm already seeing the difference.

Okay.

And what, and what that company does, and it's only a 6-month contract and they give the reins to you. But, but yeah, that, that's, that's going to be really good.

With this, with the 1,300 square feet next door, is the hope to just do bigger events or 2 at once?

2 at once. That's the event. Right now, your capacity? Yes, because right now I am— we're in October. I'm booked through January on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays in the big space. So I hate that I'm always turning away. I can't do it.

Come up on prices or something.

Yeah. So we're like, we got to move them to the new— now the new space unfortunately is not as small, so it's more intimate parties, but it looks different. It's completely marble, marble walls, marble floors. Big chandeliers.

What used to be there?

What was there? It was a woman that sold like, you know, like the Home Depot pallets. Like what you talk about, overstock.

Yeah, yeah.

She sold overstock in there.

Marble, huh?

Yeah. So, but I redid, I had to do all that. So it was just, yeah, I completely, yeah, I made it look nice.

So is it hard to film Monday through Thursday?

I'm trying. I'm trying. So we've been doing a lot of trying to get corporate events, people. We have a guy in there now that does like MLM kind of something. And so trying to get those and giving them a really reduced rate. We've had some parties because our, our blank canvas special Monday through Thursday is $450. And that's enticed a lot of people to come in and say, you know what, maybe I should just have a Thursday night party.

Yeah.

Instead, especially if it's leading into a holiday or holiday weekend or something.

Yeah.

So we get those. So that, that has been difficult and I'm trying to find the sweet spots. A lot of— I've been giving away networking events to like the Chamber of Commerce and people like that. So, hey, come have your network event. I'll even throw in— I'll even throw in a case of wine or something. Yeah. And giving them that space to just to say, this is what you can do on a Thursday.

Yeah.

So we're trying to grow that.

Okay. So you do 8-hour events too, then?

Yes.

But most people choose 6?

Well, we don't— you could do 8 hours if you add on additional hours.

That's all.

Yeah, it's upsell. All are 6.

How much extra to add 2 more hours?

$150 an hour. So it'd be $300. Yeah.

All right. What about— I asked you earlier your top 5 events. Birthday's number 1. What's 2 through 4?

Oh, birthday's number 1. 2 baby showers.

Okay.

3 repasses and like, like, uh, like, you know, a memorial, like after a funeral where everybody goes.

A wake?

It's like a wake.

Okay.

But wakes normally before the funeral.

Okay.

Repasses normally after.

I don't think I've ever heard of a repass in my life.

Yeah, maybe that's a South Southern thing. But yeah, yeah. So the repasses.

Okay.

Um, 3. 4 would be anniversaries. And 5, you know, 5 is kind of a weird one. The most calls I get from my marketing out of any other party, which some of you want to guess, is church space. Okay, so church events.

Huh.

Can we host a revival or something like that?

Do they want to do it like every week or just—

So I have 3, I have 3 churches right now that are every Sunday.

Holy cow.

So that, that's— I get more calls, phone calls on churches than I get on any other thing.

Wow.

And that's also made me led that maybe there's a business in it. Maybe there's a business into just having an open space. Only churches.

Make it look like a church. Make it— yeah, kind of generic. What hours do they meet on Sunday and how much do you charge?

So I have a church that is from 8:30 to 12.

Okay.

I normally do 3 hours, but I've given them a little bit extra time. So 8:30 to 12, then I have 12:30 to 3:30.

Okay.

So I have 2 essentially 9 to 12s, then I have one 12 to 3 or 12:30 to 3. I'm trying to fill it another one to get 4.

So you have 2 meetings at the same time?

Yeah, in the 2 different spaces.

And what do you charge all 3 of them?

So we have 2 church prices. One is $1,000 and one is $1,500. And I think all three of those are currently on the one thousand a month.

So wow! Oh, a month.

A month.

They meet every Sunday.

But they meet every Sunday.

Okay.

Yeah, every Sunday.

That that covers your rent.

Exactly. So the goal is to get more churches, and we've offered them upgraded package where I'll bring in PTZ cameras, pan tilt zilt cameras. I'll train somebody, show them how to one livestream. Livestream because more donations for them. Yes, I show them like because I've been showing them look. if you guys want to grow, because we had one church in here that grew big enough to go get their own space.

Yeah.

So now we've moved in the other 3. And so I advertise both packages, your regular, and then there's like $1,800 a month package where I'll train somebody how to, how to livestream.

Yeah.

And one-click YouTube, one-click Facebook. Because right now some of them do livestream with someone holding a phone. And I showed them the difference of, look, you could do this, this, and it's maybe just not in their budget at the moment. But I said, look, when you're ready to go in, I'll move cameras in here and I'll help you guys do it. Because— but yeah, I get more calls on churches and I turn away more churches because that, you know, you only got— yeah, you only got 4 slots.

So yeah. I'm surprised they all need that much time.

Yeah, I'm surprised too. I don't— well, I see a lot of them do like they'll bring food and they'll have lunch afterwards together. They'll do stuff like that. And the The largest congregation right now only has, I think, 40 people. The other ones are 15 to 20, and they're growing each week. That's why I try to sell them on live streaming, because live streaming will help you grow. And marketing— they need help with marketing, but that's a whole different business. I only got so many hours.

Right.

But the wheels are turning there, because I think literally you have a building that was a church or looks like a church, because the churches also pay sometimes a couple like $150 to come in on a Wednesday, and either they want to meet with some members or have a Bible study. And if you— and, and they really would like Thursdays.

Wednesdays could be great.

Yeah, I try to sell them on Wednesday. Sometimes they want on Thursday or Friday night. I have events, I can't do that. But that's why I think maybe there's something to this other business. Yeah, it's just a church building, church space.

Interesting.

And then you have 6 churches that rotate, but they also have access to the week to meet up because the, um, the pastors of both have said, I really just need an office for Monday. And sometimes I'll be like, look, I'm already working in here today. If you, you want to come in for 2 hours, that's fine. Yeah, but I really can't make a habit of that. Um, but so that's why— that's a whole different business. I need more time. But I think there's something to that too.

Yeah.

Because, uh, that, that's literally— I get more calls on that than any other That's amazing. And my ads on ChurchSpace will outperform everything else too.

Really?

Yeah. The organic ads on ChurchSpace.

Just posting organically on Instagram? Yeah.

About ChurchSpace being open, that outperforms everything else.

Man, it makes me want to go rent a church and then rent it out again.

Yeah.

There's a lot of churches for rent.

Yeah.

Or for sale.

And a lot of, we get bigger churches that have looking to plant in Atlanta and they reach out to me.

And you need to kind of test the market.

Yeah. And I just— most of the time I don't have the space.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. So church is number 5. Any other kind of random events that you have that would be like 6 through 10?

Fashion shows. We started doing those. We did a fashion show that was great. I know I'm friends with a really popular designer in Atlanta, and I asked her, I was like, hey, I really want to do fashion shows. I won't— I'm not going to charge you.

You post about on Instagram.

Yeah, did, did. I built out runways. I had some friends of mine that do professional lighting. They came in, looked at the copy on photos, look amazing, and videos look amazing. Doesn't even look like our venue when you have the lighting. Then we pipe and draped some of the other spaces off and professionally lit it. And so since that, I, I'm— I've done like 3 other fashion shows. Wow. That was in May.

Okay.

We've done 3 since then and I get that. And I think I have one in November too. So those have been good. And then it's up, it's up. I think I did 2 packages. I did a $2,000 package with just a runway and you do everything yourself. And then I did a $3,000, I'll bring the lighting, everything else. And so it's been a mixture of those 2.

I mean, it's all about surface area. Like the more types of events you do, the more you open up your market. Yeah. And it's a finite amount of space and time. So the more eyeballs you have on your space, the more you can charge. Yeah. Do you have employees?

No, just my wife and I.

Really? You still have a job?

Yeah.

No way.

Yeah.

All right. So you've been open less than a year. Let's talk numbers. Since November, when you opened, what have your monthly revenue and profit numbers been?

So my lowest month since November, which I think was November, we did $11,000.

Your first month ever was your worst month. You did $11,000 revenue?

Yes. $11,000 revenue.

And profit?

Uh, not so much on that month because we put it all back into the building.

Sure.

And then our highest month has been $22,500.

Wow.

Um, and then on average, I think I did the average a little while ago. We were right at like $16,000, like $15,900.

In profit?

Uh, no. Or in revenue.

Oh, that's been— oh geez. Okay.

Revenue.

And what's your average profit on a $16,000 month?

would be about $8,000. Wow. Yeah.

So 50% net profit margins. Yeah. But if you have a $25,000 month, like your margins just go up. Yeah. Because your costs are fixed. Costs of no employees, which would be a variable cost. Your overhead is fixed. Your utilities are basically fixed, right?

Yeah. So the only thing that's gone up is our rent. So now we're at $4,500 rent. We're about to if we acquire that middle space, that will take us to $5,500 a month in rent. And so that— but, but the upside is now that we're marketing the other side, literally just opened 3 weeks ago.

Yeah.

So now we're marketing that, like all those dates I turned away from the rest of this year, if I can even get 30% of those into the new space. And at first we were going to charge less because it's a little bit smaller, but we found it with as nice as it is and then The same amount of work has to go into decorating those things. So we're going to keep the— actually keep the price point the same. Okay. But if I could fill those dates in there and have double capacity, we should easily be at— we should easily— yeah, we should be at $30,000, $35,000 revenue.

What is your insurance cost?

Like $2,400, $2,500 a year. It's not horrible.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Yeah. So, I mean, you pay your monthly rent in like 1 or 2 events.

Yeah, the goal is I want to pay it with churches. That's, that's what I'm trying to do.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Because they pay on the first.

And they're low maintenance, I would imagine. Yeah, they're pretty low maintenance.

And no, the only, only low, only bad— not, it's not even a bad thing. They're low maintenance. But we have, um, because we have, uh, the church chairs and I don't have anywhere to store them. So I'm bringing them from home or moving them from—

They can't use the normal chair.

No. And they, I don't think they even want to. That was an upsell to them, liking to have the nice padded church chairs in there. And some of them have podiums that they store there. One has drums, keyboard they store there. So I'm touching those chairs 3, 4 times a week, which is just a huge time suck to move those out. So the goal is to— we had cleaners and they, for whatever reason, stopped.

Hmm.

That price point, that charge came off our statement each month, but now that means I'm doing it.

Yeah.

So the goal is to get more cleaners. And the cleaners were great because they come in Saturday, they clean, they set the room up for Sunday. They bring all the chairs over, set them up for Sunday, set up the podiums. They go home and I'm there to let them in 8 in the morning Sunday, which was great.

How much of your square footage are you using for storage?

Oh man, uh, maybe 400 between the two spaces.

400 square feet, about 10%. Yeah, give or take.

Yeah, about 10%.

Okay.

Because a lot of it's at home, unfortunately, too, right?

Yeah. So are you working 40 hours a week at your job?

Yeah.

And you're doing this in the evenings and a lot of work on the weekends?

Yeah.

You enjoy it?

Oh, I enjoy it.

Yeah. You like being around people? I mean, you were a DJ, so—

Yeah, I like the people. I like, I like the business. Stuff on it. Some of the stuff, well, we didn't discuss is like when we were going to the other places that were doing it old school way. And like, I like funnels. I like, you know, it's all our—

Yeah. What's your tech stack?

Yeah. So our tech stack. So GoHighLevel, some Hootsuite, Meta, and basic Excel, basic like Microsoft stuff. Google Workspace. Yeah. Google Workspace or Microsoft Workspace. So a lot of GoHighLevel, our CRM, bringing people in. Then the Instant Spotlight I told you about before where they take the pictures, because that's also a funnel system that talks to my GoHighLevel, that ports all the names and info over to GoHighLevel and then puts everybody in our funnel for our marketing there.

Do you have any bearing on how much competition you have compared to any given event rental business anywhere? Like, is it extra competitive in Stone Mountain or less competitive?

You know, I don't know outside of our area. It's, it's right now in ours, there are 2, there are 3 other on our street on Rockbridge Road. There's 3 others.

Wow.

And so, um, but they're different though. The one that, there's one that's extremely nice, beautiful place. The woman that runs it, she's been in the wedding industry for 40 years and she's great. And her inside of her place, I can't touch it. It's just immaculate.

Yeah.

But when we have, you know, she sent us stuff. Unfortunately, she's had 2 or 3 occasions where she's double booked somebody. And so she's called me like, hey, I double booked this person and their party's tomorrow. Can I give them there? I'll, I'll do it. That's great. Last week she had one. They came over. People were frantic. Our weddings, I couldn't help them because I'm booked up now.

Yeah.

So, but I think unfortunately for her, she's— her weddings are beautiful, some of the best in the state. But her stuff is on a notebook. She's right. That's how she's double booking because she's writing down dates.

She forgot to highlight.

Yeah, exactly. So I think that's our advantage. And even the other ones, the one that's further down, the woman's been in the business 20 years.

Yeah.

They're, they're great at what— and they're both designers, decorators by trade. They're great at what they do, but they both, they don't do any, they're, they're doing no paid social. One doesn't even have a website. One has a, one has a Facebook page that has stuff that was posted, last post was 6 years ago.

Crazy.

So when I was going into the business, I, Made a detailed list of everybody. Did they have Facebook? Did they have websites? And then I went, took a tour and saw all the things we could do better.

Yeah.

And we're killing them just on the fact that our socials there, our presence there.

Yeah.

And that we're trying not to make those mistakes. And it's also, it's a lot of work to write down. We, another thing, we've had several tours because people said, hey, I booked a tour with them. No one showed up. I called them. They said, oh, I'm at the dentist. I can be there in 2 hours. And so they come to us because, you know, it's all through either they book it or we book it. It's all through GoHighLevel.

Yeah.

Sends the reminders to everybody. Hey, your tour's coming up tomorrow. Your tour's coming up in an hour. It's on my phone. Yeah, I can't— we don't miss tours and we don't miss dates.

That would be crazy.

Yeah, because that's, that's our business.

Your close rate on tours is probably stupid. Yeah, yeah, it's because, yeah, you got to get them by the time they get there. I mean, you probably close 70, 80% of those.

I think we close about 70%. Yeah, yeah, about 70%. The tour— but we have— I don't know what the issue is. We only, only about 60, about 50% of the tours show.

Yeah.

So, and that, that number has gone down. It was much higher.

That's surprising.

That's surprising. Yeah. So it sends the follow-ups. Now we've started thinking Do we need a phone call follow-up?

Right.

Do we need to get a VA or somebody to call and say, hey, just a reminder, your tour— because if they want to cancel, that's great. That's, that's fine. But that causes a— that, that's a time issue with us because it's just the two of us that give tours. So, you know, we have certain parts of the day blocked off because we're either picking up from school, picking up kids and those things. But we essentially give tours 10 a.m. to 7 PM Monday through Friday, but we have issue with people. So then we try to stack them when we can.

Gotcha.

So if, if try to have a bunch of them from 3 to 5, right, in case somebody doesn't show.

One big unlock for me is probably stupid simple to you, is just the fact that most of these event rental places are just renting the space. Like, yeah, because I'm thinking like, oh, this is half a million dollars to get started here. You got to own a building, you know, buy a building, like You and most of your competitors are just renting a space.

Just renting the space.

Sometimes standalone, usually in a retail center.

Yeah.

Crazy.

And it's not— I think our space looks beautiful inside, but it's not— it wasn't like $100,000.

Yeah. What did you spend on like tables and chairs? Like you spent $30-ish grand on the buildout. What about all the stuff that you have?

Maybe $5,000. Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist. That's your best friend. So when I find, you know, the regular Lifetime round tables, they're what? Yeah, $120 in Sam's or something. I try to get them on Facebook Marketplace for $30. So a lot of those—

The off-white plastic ones?

Yep. Yep.

And so you have the 6-foot ones too?

Yep, we have those. Originally we started with— I found a guy selling cafeteria tables, the old school ones that are on wheels that fold in half. Yeah, they're around. And those are a nightmare to move. Okay. They weigh 200 pounds. They're So I bought them and I was able to flip them, sold them for more than I bought them for on Marketplace, then went and bought from somebody else that had— was selling, you know, I bought somebody that was selling from their closing down their event venue.

Yeah.

So yeah, so just the tables, the chairs are the most expensive.

Chairs like that?

I don't have any like that. I have the clear safari chairs. Oh, you have to look those up. They're acrylic.

Okay.

Look really nice. They're clear. They're a little bit delicate. I've probably had 20 broken this last year.

Okay.

But they're like $75 a chair.

Okay.

So that— they're expensive. So you could easily spend 10 grand just on chairs.

But you've spent like 5 total on all of your tables and chairs?

And the most expensive thing was the initial 100 chairs I bought was like $3,000.

Okay. And then what about TVs and all that? That's included in there?

Yeah. TVs. Yeah. That was not so expensive. I knew how to do some of it myself. It's an LED screen, but we have 65 inches that are all— 9 of them are all attached on a grid. So it makes the one screen.

That's cool.

So that wasn't horrible. I'm thinking that next year I may really upgrade to the full LED panel. Some of those, $10,000, $11,000-ish for those. But this works. It does everything we need to do. I bought a commercial-grade NSP box, which is what hooks all them together where you can show individual pictures on one large picture. And some of that I already knew how to do.

Yeah. So if someone really wanted to start this business on a budget, what's the least it would take?

I think you could do it for under $3,000. I think you could. I think you could.

What about like first month's rent deposit?

Okay, so maybe $6,000. I would say find a rent. We wanted 6 months, we got 4 months of free rent.

Okay.

But the free rent saved our lives because we were able to put all we were going to be paying into rent into, into the space. So I would say, and we looked at many properties, some of them said no, absolutely no free rent. And I knew we needed to build this out. I knew we couldn't do it. I have another friend in the business that started around the same time. He He took an SBA loan for like $50 grand and was open 7 days after he did his lease. And he had a build-out too. Like, he—

How's he doing?

He's doing great.

Where's he at?

He is in Virginia.

Okay.

So, and he— and his prices are more than mine because there's no competition for him. He's killing it. There's no competition for them. So.

So you might be in a more competitive area.

I think we are. Yeah, I think we are. And I mean—

It sounds like it. 4 in the same place, 2 down the street in Stone Mountain, Georgia, of all places. So I think I'm thinking of DFW and I'm like, when was the last time I drove by an event venue? Certainly they're not in strip malls.

Really? Oh, because I drive by them every day all over metro Atlanta.

Yeah, it's a business that I never think about. Yeah, I don't have events. I don't do bridal showers, you know? Yeah, my wife would be good at this because she loves hosting. She loves decorating.

That's my wife too.

She's, she's going to hear this and I know she's going to be like, hey babe, I heard that episode. She never listens to my podcast, so I know if she did, it means something.

Yeah, she's got— I, I— we make a good team, but my wife wants absolutely nothing to do with the tech stuff.

Yeah.

Or the other stuff. She just wants to meet with the people and come up with great ideas. She loves— that's the best part of her day, is sitting down and saying, look, you told me— like, she has them fill out a questionnaire and says, look, you told me your favorite colors are yellow and this and that, and you want this, and you're having a baby. And then she shows them, and then she'll text me, say, hey, can you create something for the screens because they're there?

Yeah.

So then we'll, you know, we try to— when we're bringing people in for tours, we kind of know what they're doing. So I'm already selling them. I'm already having— if I can, especially if I can find a picture of them online, I already got pictures of them on the screens and the other stuff. So, man, it's an easy sell when they walk in the building. But my wife loves that part of saying, look, I can make— I can— and showing the proof like, look, I can make this room look completely different. It's just open canvas.

Yeah.

I can make it look however you want to look or however your vision is.

Anything else that people should know before starting this business? Like something that people need to know?

Yeah, like don't fall in love with the building. Fall in love with what the inside can do for you. And you got to have parking.

Has parking ever been an issue for you?

Not yet.

Okay.

So we have some other interesting things that are going on. We have the lake and we actually found out this year the lake has worked with our landlord to to use the parking lot for their Lake Fest.

Okay.

So I've had to— I've been talking to him this week, like, look, this is wonderful, it's great, but I have a 120-person wedding on that day. So we got to figure out who's going to use what.

Okay.

So we'll— that will be the true test next week to see if that is okay. But so far it's been great. No, no issue because it's okay. No one really there but us.

So, okay, so what you can do inside, parking, what else?

Parking, your, your, the company or not the company, your county bylaws. Can you have, can you have a fee for that? You can use ChatGPT. Yeah. Can you have event spaces? Some counties don't allow them or some counties say you can have them, but you have to get a liquor license. And most people don't know how very expensive a liquor license can be or how difficult it can be. So knowing those things, because I'd hate to see anybody like sign a lease and then Because landlord don't care. Yeah, but you sign a lease and then go into the property and realize you can't build it out or do what you want.

What do you think about using like a buying or renting a big, nice home as an event space?

I think, I think there's something to that. We've, we've talked about that, especially as a big yard. The one thing we can't do that people see us online and see the pictures inside, they're like, hey, how does the courtyard or how's the outside look? And I'm like, sorry, parking lot. It's a parking lot. Yeah, I don't got one. But I think the house and especially zoned for commercial and a big yard, I think that's great for weddings.

Yeah.

And then you can have onsite, you could have an Airbnb, you have so many things.

Oh yeah.

If I were to do it again or when I do it again, I think we'll lean more towards something like that. But I think a house is great. And also I think I see people doing like going to a local VFW and saying, hey, can I either use your basement or use your hall for you know, can I prepay for 2 weekends? And then you try to sell those weekends to somebody else and test the concept.

Without a long-term lease.

Yeah, without a long-term lease. And then, but you got the thing is like ours, everybody that walks in our door says, I did not think it was going to look like this when I walked in. And if you do that with the VFW or whatever, you, that's what you have to sell on. People can't, they have to be transformed when they walk in and their pictures. Their pictures have to look great on Instagram. Every, every place needs to be photographable in your building, your lounge, your bathrooms. We spend a lot of money in the bathrooms and we see so many pictures on Instagram in our bathrooms. Yeah, because just we have great lighting and those things. So that's, you know, selling point.

Where can people find you?

So they can find us at The Hall ATL on all things social, thehallatl.com. Okay. My wife and I get a lot of questions about this, so we kind of devised a little free ebook that you can download straight from our Instagram, and that's the Hall ATL.

Okay.

And yeah, we're there and we take questions every day. I just want to help people. So anybody that wants to do this, yeah, just connected your last name Hall. Yeah, worked out for it. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I'm sure it was intentional.

Very. Okay.

Uh, Justin, this has been amazing.

Man, it's been awesome. Thank you.

Hey guys, if you're still listening to this, it's probably because you haven't had a chance to take your AirPods out. You're still mowing the lawn. You're still driving, what have you. If you're still here with me, I would really, really love and appreciate a 5-star review on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. It would mean a lot if you want to go the extra mile, share this episode with a friend that might have an interest in starting a business. It would mean a ton. Hope you have the best day of your life today.