| Friend,
On The 5th Day of Christmas At The Dojo...
...we planned our New Year's Eve lock-in. Now of course, if you don't teach kids then this email is not going to apply to you.
But if you do, and you've never done an event like this before, or you weren't planning on having one on New Year's Eve, pay attention.
For those of you who don't have kids, let me tell you what having kids means. For starters, it means that nothing in life, no event, plan, date, or vacation, is ever simple anymore.
You see, when you have a little crumb-rustler depending on you for their every meal and morsel, it tends to complicate your life... considerably. You can't be spontaneous anymore, at least not like you were in the beginning of your marriage, before you had kids.
Everything now takes planning, and every single time you want to go out and have a meal that doesn't include french fries and toy surprises, or that you want to see a movie that isn't animated, or that you want to do something that doesn't involve small children hanging on your legs asking over and over and over again, "Can we go now, please dad, please, please, please..."
Well, such things now take planning on the scale of a coup of a small country, or the burglary of a Las Vegas casino's vault. Of course, the biggest issue is, "Who is going to watch the kid?" And that, my friends, is not a question that is easily answered.
So, if you can solve that question/dilemma for parents on a night when simply finding a babysitter is a task of monumental proportions, well...
...then you'll become an instant hero to the parents you've saved from suffering through another do-nothing New Year's Eve, sitting at home drinking sparkling grape juice and crashing out at 9:45 (yes, I have experience in these matters).
But if you want to do this, you need to start planning now. As in, right now. Not because these events are difficult to plan (they aren't) but because parents like to plan everything they do weeks in advance, because they are simply accustomed to doing so.
Which means that, if you want a good turn out for your New Year's Eve lock-in event, you need to announce it pronto and start taking reservations immediately.
A few tips on this: - Require payment in advance, and make it non-refundable. Explain to parents that you have a limited amount of space (you and two chaperons can probably handle 20 kids, tops) so you have to make sure you have an accurate head count well in advance of the event.
- Don't charge too much, but don't charge too little, either. Find out what it costs on average in your area to get a sitter for 4-5 hours on New Year's Eve (and don't be shocked to find out teenage girls are downright mercenary when it comes to setting their rates) and charge about half that for for the night (say, 7:30 pm drop-off to 12:30 am pick-up). $10 to $12 an hour is the going rate where I live, so I'd charge $20 - $25 bucks a child, and halve that for each additional child per family.
- Plan the night out, and have a lot of activities scheduled. The key to success at these events is to keep the kids moving a lot for the first two hours, then feed them and give them things to do while they crash and burn and go into a food coma. Some kids aren't going to crash, so make sure you have things for them to do after all the organized events are over. Movies, age-appropriate video games, etc.
- Have a strict policy on late pick-ups. I would set the pick-up time at 12:30 am, and expect parents to pick up as late as 1:30 am. Make sure you put a footnote on your event flier that says you'll charge a late fee for parents who pick up their child after a certain time, and enforce it.
- Also, make sure your sign-in form includes a space for two cell phone numbers - either both parents, or a parent and a grandparent or close relative who lives nearby.
- Make sure your chaperons/assistants are people you can trust. I know this goes without saying, but don't just assume anything. You should be doing background checks on your employees anyway, but if it's a parent volunteer let them know you need to do a background check on them because it's your policy. Hardly any parent will be offended at this, and if they are you probably don't want them chaperoning.
The great thing about these events is that so long as the kids have fun, the parents are happy to pay for it. So, make sure everyone has a good time, and you'll have a successful event that kids will look forward to, year after year.
But remember, since this is pretty much the last event you'll be able to plan for the year, you'll want to get the word out ASAP in order to have a decent turnout.
So, spend about 30 minutes or so today planning the event and creating a flier to post in your dojo and to hand out to parents and kids in class, or to email out to your student list and post on Facebook.
Until next time,
Mike Massie MartialArtsBusinessDaily.com
P.S. - Lock-in events are work, but they're also a lot of fun. My advice is to just relax and enjoy being a kid again for a few hours. Play some Nerf wars with the kids, do a few rounds of dodge ball, play a video game or two, and remember that you're getting paid to play. It pretty much doesn't get better than that.
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