Planning to make some plans

I've decided that Wednesday is blog day. Because I wrote my first post on Wednesday two weeks ago, and Facebook keeps hassling me to be more active on the Adventure Valley page. So I am committing to you that I will be writing these every Wednesday. And in return all I ask is that you come to Hero Quest this summer. Deal? Deal.

Devin and I did something a little scary this past week. We gave a business plan proposal to our investor. Of course I use the term 'business plan' lightly, because I honestly have no idea what an actual business plan looks like, but we sure did our best! Twelve powerpoint slides of pure genius if you ask me. You see, our investor didn't really see the vision for Hero Quest and he didn't feel confident that we were going to pull it off. Our presentation had to convince him that we could get the word out about Hero Quest, do it in a way that would appeal to our audience, and that we could actually create a product that people would love. I am happy to say that it was a success! He gave us the money we needed to get started on the production!

One of the slides from our proposal, summarizing some of the main aspects of Hero Quest.

Honestly the preparation and thought that went into the presentation was a reward on its own. Devin and I both knew that we wanted to do this, and that it is going to be a success, but we hadn't really answered the tough questions like "why?" and "how?". Even if we had already had the money we needed, I think the time we put into the presentation was invaluable. Now we have a solid timeline, budget, marketing strategy, operations plan, attendance projections and more.

We also had the chance to present it to some of our cast members and volunteers as a practice run. Again, I think this was more important than the actual presentation. For one, it instilled a lot of confidence in the people who are involved to see that Devin and I are dead serious about this and we don't just have passion, but an actual plan to pull it off. Plus, the myriad of ideas and questions from this group provoked us to think about things we might have missed and improve our plan ten fold.

From top to bottom this business plan was awesome for us. Since I can't give the presentation to everyone, I encourage you to come to Hero Quest and see our plan in action. I am confident we will convince you too.

-Whitney

PS. I used a really awesome free excel template to put together our timeline. Check it out here!

Looking Legit

Guess what I have been doing for the better portion of the last two hours? Creating an email signature. Was it worth it? Oh yeah.

One thing that I really want people to feel when they look into Adventure Valley is that we are a professional company, not just a bunch of kids trying to make something happen. (Although we are that too :). ) So I try to convey professionalism in everything we do; our events, our online presence, and even our emails. Truthfully we do not send out a lot of emails right now, but I wanted to be ready when we do. And it is for that reason that I dedicated my afternoon to creating a real email signature.

I already have an email signature at my day job. Of course it was provided to me by the marketing department, but I was the one that added it to my emails so I was already half way to knowing how to implement one for Adventure Valley, right? Wrong. It turns out that there is a lot more to making an email signature than typing it into the little signature box in Apple Mail.  So I turned to the internet.

After just a minute of searching "how to create your own email signature" it became clear that the preferred method was html. I am NOT a programmer. Yes, I work for a software design company, and yes I have seen html code before, but that does not mean that I knew the first thing about how to use it for my signature. But that is what google is for. It wasn't long before I found this great article with an html signature template and everything!

That leads me to the next problem. If you want a picture or logo in your signature (which I do) you have to have a way to host it online. I wasn't even sure if I knew what that meant. I found an article that mentioned you could host it on google drive, but that was a dead end. I also tried to upload it to the Go Daddy photo album that came free with our website domain. But alas, that too did not lead me to the direct link to the photo that the internet said I needed. Eventually I just typed in "how to host a photo online" and that led me to imgur. I didn't even have to create an account with imgur and I was able to upload my logo and even resize it and crop it. Plus, the direct link was showing in a field right next to my photo. Cha-ching!

So I was able to create my signature, using the template and an online html editor, but that is when the aformentioned article stopped helping. The directions on how to insert my html into the signature file must have been outdated because the file no longer existed where the article said it would.

What operating system is Apple even on these days? I checked my "about this mac", it's Yosemite. Wait, that's not a type of big cat... oh well. Anyway, one more internet search on "how to create an html mail signature on yosemite" and bam! I find a new article that not only shows me exactly how to find these very well hidden signature files, but also suggests a great fee html editor that was much easier to use than the online one that I had started this project with.

So there you go, proof that the only skill you need in life is the ability to use google, and that will lead to step by step instructions on how to do anything else.

And, here it is, the signature in all it's glory. Complete with logo.

Thanks for sharing this victory with me. AND for sharing my second victory today which is writing my first Adventure Valley blog post! ;)

-Whitney