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!