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from the art of the deal to keeping it real live from the simply vegas studios it's the power move with john gafford back again back again back again sitting to the left colt the scourge of carpathia amaden might be the best one yeah yeah i like it yeah i mean it's a strong nickname for you as always
Chris Connell, Esquire. How are you, sir? I am your host, John Gafford, and we do have a special guest with us today.
Special guest. Yep, and thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I know. This is awesome here. This is amazing. I was not expecting this. Dude, this is not a low-rent podcast. No, this is top of the line. This is serious business right here. We used to do this in the bathroom. Yeah, I used to be in the bathroom. At one point, it was in the back of Colt's car. That was a little suspect. I'm in the wrong business. I scare people for a living when I see these posh offices and stuff like that. I'm like, where did I go wrong? Guys, we have got a...
A unbelievable show for you today. We're going to talk about a lot of cool stuff. Primarily, this is going to be a master class in licensing is how I like to look at this. Because Jason, who's our guest today, and I'll let him tell what he does, has pulled off one of the best licensing deals that I've seen. And if you don't know what I'm talking about when I say licensing, it's where you take something that is a massively valuable commodity.
a company a brand intellectual intellectual property and you basically say hi this is who i am i would like to be able to use this for my own bidding and uh and jason has done this masterfully we're going to talk about that in a second but before we get to what you do jason before we get to what before we get to what is the scourge of carpathia the scourge of carpathia i think jason might
Jason probably knows what this is. In fact, I do believe you have a painting. I have a Vigo, the Carpathian from Ghostbusters 2. The scourge of Carpathia. It doesn't look anything like Vigo, but I mean. You haven't seen me on my rough days. But yeah, Vigo. I think it is. But I think there's a couple things we got to talk about before we talk about this. Because first of all, this is going to come out on Wednesday. So by now, I might be all wood. But I will say this.
I have never felt worse for an individual NFL football player than I did for Josh Allen on Sunday. Oh, my goodness. That was just absolutely disgusting.
gut-wrenching it was such good football that sean payton quit today yeah i know well we're gonna talk about that too never mind yeah sean's sean's like uh let's look at my quarterback options for next year okay let's uh that just shows you can't get your emotions up until things are over especially in business right like people get all excited oh my paycheck whatever and it's going and then deal falls apart same those guys you saw people in the crowd crying hugging oh the
Did you see the stat? I knew it wasn't over. Did you see the stat? This is a pretty impressive stat. It took 13 seconds to do that last drive for 14 seconds to run one play. Wasn't that wild? That's a wild stat. I thought you were going to say, do we feel bad for anybody other than me? My stocks have crashed.
killed me the last two days. That was the shortest recession in the history of sessions yesterday. The towel drops a thousand points and it's back positive by the end of the day. I bought the dip. He bought the dip. I bought one more share of wins. Yeah, now I'm at two shares of wins. Two shares of wins.
Did anybody see the hot mic thing with Biden yesterday? Did anybody see that? Oh, yeah. Where he leans out and calls a guy a stupid son of a bitch on a hot mic, calls him a reporter. Yeah, the Fox. Peter Doocy. Yeah, Peter Doocy. But then he called him later. Did you hear that, though, after the fact Biden did call Peter Doocy and said, kind of apologized. Yeah, he didn't mean to say you were a stupid son of a bitch.
I would have doubled down. If I was the president, yeah, he yelled something. Not only are you a stupid son of a bitch, you're an ignorant bastard. You're ugly too. Yeah, you're ugly too. I mean, here's the thing. You know, every time Trump got on somebody, you know, via Twitter or whatever else, he was a super bad guy. Are we just going now at this point that Joe Biden's like your cranky old grandpa that like, you know, he's going to say inappropriate stuff at the dinner table and just let it go? Are we there? I think mentally we just cut these guys off at 55.
i don't need any more guys over 65 running this country i just don't know nuclear war affects them a lot less than me i know i know it's you know it's it's right from an actuarial point of view yeah it's me they don't care anymore because i have kids that are you know no he's he's he's right there to just telling people to get off the lawn right did you see that right in the middle of the press conference russia keeps saying they want to nuke us nevada
Nevada? Yeah. What do we do in Russia? Area 51. It's been out there a couple, for the last two weeks. Khabib lives here, I assume. Yeah, that's true. Khabib lives here. Yeah, they're not. Yeah, they want to go after the aliens. I don't know why. No.
How awesome would it be? We should go try to get into Area 51 one day. How far off of the licensing trade? Let's go off the rails. No, we're getting there. We're getting there. We're on Aliens Jones. Aliens Jones. It's a property I would want. These are the important things we have to get to before we get to that stuff. Speaking of aliens, I watched a Tom Hanks movie the other day. Oh, my God.
And it made me hate him more. It was Mr. Rogers movie. I'm like, this guy's not really... Wait, you hated him after the Mr. Rogers movie? Yeah. I can't believe they licensed...
his name to that movie. Do you like Mr. Rogers or do you hate Mr. Rogers? I liked him until now. Now I hate him for no reason other than Tom. What about Bob Ross? What about Steve Ray? But I love him. But if Tom Hanks played him, I'd probably hate him. What about Tom Hanks and like the Burbs or like Big? No, he hates him. He hates him. Across the board. He sees him. Unforgivable.
Unreasonably. Yeah, let's clear this up, Jason. Cole is a pod person. Let's go ahead and sum that up right now. He's a pod. And everything that is normal with everybody else is kind of the polar opposite with him, and it's just what he does. What else do you hate, Cole? There was something else that you hated that literally blew my mind in half.
Oh, Star Wars? I've never seen it. Oh, really? Not one. Somebody sent me a thing like surprisingly like, oh, look at this actor surprising people. I'm like, I don't get it. Who's that actor? I've never seen him. Star Wars guy. I don't know who he is. He goes on this show. He goes, you know how dumb they are in Star Wars? The guy is dressed in black and they call him Darth Vader, not Dark Vader.
Yeah, went on for 10 minutes about Darth Vader. What a horrible name. Are you more like a rom-com guy? I like Spaceballs. Watch that like a week ago. Speaking of people that don't know what the hell is going on, I don't know if you saw this. What I call a hard segue there. Did you see that Neil Young has threatened Spotify?
saying, if you don't get rid of Joe Rogan, you can't have my catalog on there. That's stupid. Who's got a better... How long do you think that's going to take before Spotify just hits delete on Neil Young? I think me and like 40 other people would be the only ones mad about it. Mad about it. I threw out my decade's CDs, I think. Oh, jeez. Yeah, I don't even... When's the last time you went for a... When's the last time you reached for a Neil Young CD? All the time. Really? Love Neil Young. I think he is just... The needle in the damage done and...
Name some songs. I can't think of it. This segment is not going the way that I thought it would. And for the look of Jason's face. Ohio, Old Man, Needle in the Damage, Done. For the turnstiles, one of the best songs. I'm going full Tom Hanks on this. I hate it. I hate it. Tom Hanks. I'm going Hanks on it. Full Tom Hanks on it. He's not even that young. This is like your Bataclan.
He's not even young. No, I can't take Neil Young. And I'll tell you why I hate him even worse is when Eddie Vedder decided to morph into him. I hate him worse for that than just for being him. He's so good to Eddie Vedder. Who's excellent. Respects Neil Young. No, it's dreadful. Terrible. Neil Young? Neil Young crazy whore?
yeah terrible all of it garbage couldn't name a song but it just shows you know your cards before you start negotiating a card like that because who are you going to get rid of the number one spotify person or the number one podcast person who isn't even young people people need to get off change your dick though like they really need to either listen to them and shut up
or just have no opinion about it. The numbers don't lie, though, is the problem. If you listen to him and you disagree with him, point out what you disagree with. I hate Joe Rogan because I heard that he took horse medicine one time. It's such an irrational backlash against Joe Rogan who oftentimes is a very interesting guest, very balanced. He doesn't say crazy right-wing shit. People think he's this guy without listening to him. That's the problem. It's because CNN and all them portray him that way and filter him to look green on his stuff. Did you see that?
Yeah. Original video. So do you think you could go, uh, be an Olympian? We got three weeks Olympics. I feel like you could want to winter. Well,
Well, why don't we talk now since you've brought Jason into the conversation. I was trying to bring him in. Don't ask Colt what he thinks a biathlon is. Oh, gosh. My neighbor has got plenty of biathlons. It's not what you think it is, Colt. I don't think it's what you think it is. The pole vault is not part of the question. Anyway, moving on. Jason, so let's talk about you, man. So for those of you who don't know, Jason, let's start with just what do you own here in town? Here in Las Vegas, what do you own that is so interesting? So...
Long story short, I started back in, I came to town about 2002, started a haunted house, just a generic haunted house. I'd always loved doing haunted houses as I was a kid. And growing up, I'd build haunted houses out of couch cushions, you know, in my backyard, whatever it took, you know, to make a haunted house. So I did one, you know, when I was going to college at University of Nebraska at Lincoln and that became successful, but good old Lincoln, Nebraska wasn't big enough for me. So I kind of, I love Lincoln, don't get me wrong. It's a beautiful city, but I wanted something big. So I
looked at all the cities that didn't have any competition that I could actually come into and compete with. And Vegas was such a new, young city still at the time, you know, 20 years ago. And I'm like, you know, I'm going to come to Vegas and try this. There's only these haunted houses and these parking lots and like Smith's parking lot, you know, and trailers. I'm like, I can compete with this.
So I did. 2002, I started Haunted House. It was successful. At the time, Mandalay Resort Group, aka Circus Circus, approached me and they're like, hey, you know, we have this big property. So they came to you. You didn't go to them. They came to me. They left this lady. So where were the haunted houses you were doing?
They parking lot ones like that. No, no. I rented an old abandoned ballroom that had this murder in it on Highland drive. That was allegedly haunted. So I put it in this 10,000 square foot old abandoned ballroom and the lady marketing lady at circus circus, Pam Torres came in and she, she gave her business card to my mom working the ticket booth at the time. Cause I wanted my, I wanted, it was all cash back then. You want to, you know, you got to trust. Cause I mean, you could be walking out 20, 30, $40,000 in a night, you know?
So, you know, she hands the business card. And luckily I called and Circus Circus rearranged a meeting. I went in there. They were intimidated as hell at my age because I was like 22 years old or something like that in the time. Well, let's back up a little bit. How much money were you making in Lincoln, Nebraska? When you started this, like your first real haunted house. Probably. So real haunted house. I was 18.
19, 20, 19, 19, 20. And other stuff too, though. Oh yeah. Oh God. Yeah. I had, I had started a party planning service when I was in high school. And that's really how I, I learned that Halloween would actually pay because I was dressing up as, uh,
costume characters go to kids' birthday parties. And then one day a parent comes to me and they're like, Hey, my son's got a October birthday. You know, can you do anything? You know, we'd like to set up a haunted house in the backyard. And I already had been a big collector of Halloween shit. And you know, in the first place I had, you know, I had saved up from Spencer Gibbs, bought all these props, this, that, and the other. So I'm like, you know, Hey, what's your budget? And they're like, uh, you know, my normal party was $49. And then I had an upscale party. It was like $89. So when I got the $89, a party, I was ecstatic. Hmm.
So the lady's like, my budget's $400. And I'm like, $400? And I was like, you know, I was in high school. $400, you know, 20-something years ago. Yeah, so I'm like, this is awesome. And so I'm like, heck yes. So we did the party. It turned out great. The next day, I swear, half the parents from that party called me. And I'm like, oh, shit, what did I do to their kid? Did I scare him to death? And they're like...
we got to have a Halloween party. We got to have a haunted house party. It's not my kid's birthday, but we got to have you have a haunted house party. I thought you were going to say touchy the clowns. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
you know my mom had always said you know become an attorney because i'm an attorney you got to become an attorney and i was actually going to go in that direction but now my mom's probably like god that was yeah you're doing better than most of your attorneys maybe not the great chris canal maybe not that good but i'm doing pretty good i don't have a bentley yet you know we're doing all right so yeah so i came out to vegas got the business card met with circus circus they were intimidated as hell because i was young we put on a hell of an event
And it just grew and grew and grew over 15 years. And I was starting to do other projects and such. I mean, the event was just doing amazing. But then 2017 happens in that that Route 91 festival shooting happens. That thing happened on October 1st. My event opened on September 29th, crushed the event, crushed the event, crushed MGM, crushed.
don't know why MGM necessarily sold, but allegedly they sold to Phil Ruffin because they needed to free up some cash, you know, and circus circus was, you know, a good asset for Phil Ruffin. And they did not renew my contract or we couldn't reach terms. So that was the end of that. They stopped doing fright dome. They don't do that anymore. They can't do fright dome. Cause I own fright. I own the intellectual property, fright dome. So even back then I was smart and
You know, I had lined it up. Yeah, you licensed it up. Yeah, I was smart with that, and I locked it all down. So will there ever be another Fright Dome? Probably. Are we backed up to holy hell on projects? Absolutely. So we've got it in the queue right now. Yeah, slow down, Jason. But here's the thing.
I figured you only live once. And you know what I mean? And I'm getting older now. I want to do absolutely everything I possibly can while I'm on this earth, you know, to put my stamp and say I actually did something. You know what I mean? I did something here. You know, I created, you know, arguably one of the best Halloween events in the world for 15 years. And, you know, moving on to IP, you know, now that I own. Was this before like Halloween Horror Nights and stuff at Universal? Same time. Same time. All came out together. Same time. And I remember Universal calling me because that,
That was in 2009. I got the rights to Saw. So I teamed up with Lionsgate. They also had the rights to Saw to do a haunted house on Saw. They called me and they're like, how the hell did you get the rights to do that, Jason? We were doing that. And then they changed from that point on. They changed all the radius clauses now. So, you know, that would never happen again to where they were doing it and I was doing it. And I was beating them on all the rankings on USA Today and stuff every year anyway because we were scarier than Universal Studios. I mean, they put on a beautiful event.
But it's for kids. Yeah, we were scarier. And that's what we really prided ourselves on. And we really did an amazing job with the actors because your Halloween event is only as good as your worst actor. You can create the coolest sets in the world, but if you get a bunch of shitty actors, you've got nothing. So, yeah, we teamed up with them. We lost that after Phil Ruffin took over. And Phil's a great guy. I actually met with him. He came through on our events. What was the reason? First off, I don't think people realize to get your –
To go from an abandoned warehouse to an MGM property is insane. So people in Vegas, outside Vegas, don't comprehend that. To get anything in Las Vegas, I tell people all the time, to place anything in a hotel is the hardest thing you will do on this earth of real estate. So for them to come and reach out to you, you must have created an amazing brand at that. And...
I mean, what were the terms? Did they just want a gross percentage of what you brought in? Did they make you lease it? Like, that's an impressive thing that I don't think people are really realizing. Tell us the terms. How much money did you make on that? You don't have to tell me, but I like to the end. How much money did you make on that? Do not answer that.
I got to deal with the IRS. I get sponsored by $1 of net profit. You are right. And, uh, you know, people, when they meet with me, you know, I can beat out big companies any day of the week because they see my passion in these projects. They see that we go to the next level. They see how amazing we do. I mean, I'll beat out some of the biggest and best companies out there, you know, with my little old tiny team. And, uh,
you know, we will, we will blow the doors off any event that we do. And that's what they saw. They saw the amount of effort that we put into our, our little warehouse event, the ballroom event. I'm like, Oh my God, this is amazing. You know, we come into Vegas and we just, you know, do this killer haunted house. What'd you, what'd you make on the ballroom event the first year? Oh, I think it was 250,000, 275,000. Not, not much, not much, you know, not much. Yeah. That's net or gross. You know, that was like gross back then, but it wasn't much to put on.
But, you know, I mean, yeah, Fright Dome over the years made millions upon millions upon millions upon millions of dollars, but it also cost, as anybody knows, millions upon millions to run as well. But the event was great. I mean, you know, if I would have been...
as restricted as I was, you know, if, if some of the old folks that were running the adventure dome, you know, weren't as a tight ass over there and, you know, would have listened to me, we could have changed the ticket price. Cause it, well, for one, the ticket price was too low. We were selling out every night. I think our average ticket price was like 37, $38. You know, my average ticket price at a, you know, an escape room right now is over 50. So it's like, I was getting 600 houses, scare zones, rides, double Luke, roller coasters, all this stuff. So
So it's like, yeah, our pricing was off. We could have grossed an extra million, million and a half dollars by just adjusting the price. Yeah, $69.95. Knowing the elasticity of demand, right? Yeah, and knowing that these little $20,000 escape room builds are getting $45, I mean, it's insane. Well, dude, not only that, but look at Bruno Mars is clocking down like $650 a night just to see him play. Thank you very much. Adele. I appreciate that. Oh, don't bring Adele up. Oh, boy. That's such a suck.
How do you do that? How do you go and cancel 24 hours? No, not. How's that, man? People flying across the world. Here's my question. What do you do if you're the secondary purchaser that bought the tickets for like 10 grand on the secondary market and
you really gonna go back to the person sold them to you and be like i need a refund they're not gonna do that i mean i don't know yeah who knows what happened that was a bad thing it was bad and i don't like that she was making people go out not to get political or anything like that but i don't like she was going out and making people get tested so she was going to crowd up our testing sites yeah thousands and thousands of people because they had to be vaxxed and a test and a negative test i mean adele's great she's amazing what she does but
let's be real, don't come into our town and clog up our testing sites when people that really need to go get tested need to get there and they don't want to wait four hours. I can argue with that one. She's no Amelia. She is no Amelia. No, no, yeah. Do you have...
Do you have issues with people punching your actors? Dead serious, because I won't go to them, because I would punch somebody. So at the Fright Dome, at the other one, maybe that was an issue, but not in these new attractions. Very rarely. But it's happened, right? It happens, but when you take their weapons away at the beginning with metal detectors, and you're in a dark environment, and you don't know where necessarily you are in the middle of a haunted house, it's not smart to do. So it happens, but it happens very rarely. Yeah.
Because we put all these preventative measures in place to prevent that from happening. We just don't allow them to do that. And they know they're about to lose their, at the time, $38 ticket. But it should have been $69. It should have been. Absolutely would have been $69. There's no touching either. No. No, but I'm just saying people just...
Jump out to natural reaction. I got punched three months ago at Saw. Because the labor crisis was so intense. I mean, so bad. I mean, we'll do whatever it takes so I do not have to close down any of my attractions. You're like, I'm in there. I'm open. I dressed up as the pig and I literally got punched by a guest. I went in too close to scare him. Got punched, but it didn't hurt. But I mean, I think I might have caught it. Damn, I took a punch pretty well.
pretty well. I'm like, this dude was huge. And I'm like, I'm really proud of myself. I was scared, man. I was scared. It was fine. He reacted. I'm not going to do anything. I wasn't hurt. It is what it is. Did you hold character? Did you squeal when he punched you? Like a pro. It's cool. You know, but no, actually I was on the phone with Chris. I'm like, Hey, you know, I got an injury here. You know, what can we do? But, uh, sue the owner. It happens, but it probably happens in other people's places.
a lot more than him. All right, so back to Circus Circus. You're undercutting yourself, but you're still doing amazingly well. Phil Ruffin comes in.
says, you know, thanks, but no, thanks. We're not continuing this. He, it wasn't him that said it. So Phil's, Phil's a great guy. We met after the fact, Phil would probably have us back there. It was MGM and it was the head of a circus circus who didn't want to put the deal in place because they knew the property was for sale. So MGM killed the deal. They didn't want to think, yeah, they killed the deal before it could even go. Cause they want the balance sheet as clean as humanly possible to trade. Phil would have known Phil probably would have said no.
yeah, I want this as a part of the deal, but Phil didn't even know what it existed. But I got to believe it. Circus, circus. I mean, how much revenue does that generate for the damn casino? It's had to be. It's got to be. And they would never tell me. They would never. I'm like, you know, I'm like, you know, I see the hotel numbers are going up. The occupancy rates are going up. I'm like, I'm like, how can we quantify the gambling? Yeah. How could any month be busier than that? But that going on in there? No, it was. Some reason October's through the roof, guys. I,
Oh my God. And I didn't see any, you know, there was a deal. I didn't make a great deal back then. You know what I mean? Now we would know. I didn't see any of the food and beverage, the alcohol sales and stuff like that, you know? So I would make a completely different deal. I'm a totally different person now than I was, you know, 20 years ago. Now I'm a better negotiator than this guy sitting next to me. So do you have, do you have any interest in going back?
Oh, absolutely. Because my kids are always like, oh, I wish Fright Dorm was not there. Absolutely. But it's not saying it's married to that location. The right location comes around, we will do something. It's not hard to put in rides. It's all about encompassing and having a whole night of terror. Your haunted houses, your scare zones, your rides, that can be done on another property. And doing it right. I've had so many people try to come in that don't have my motivation and don't know how to do it, and they just fail miserably. And we have people literally every day approach us about doing something. But
Dude, I'll give you a billion dollar idea right now. Horror EDC. There it is. There you go. Do a terror EDC at the dance. Think about it. The racetrack. At the racetrack. It's good weather because it's October. It's not a million degrees.
Throw some DJs out there with some scare stuff in the rides and you're good. I'm in. Pasquale, yeah, we'll do it. You know, he's a great guy. He's great. Puts on an amazing event too. But, you know, that's, now I've learned, you know, what I didn't know 20 years ago or 15 years ago is the art of saying no on certain projects now too. So, you know, I was just taking on projects, you know, I'm like, oh, that sounds really
What did you say yes to you, Wishy-Hatton? I did a project in Hong Kong on a mountaintop on top of a shopping mall that was quite the project to do. You know what I mean? It was at Victoria Peak in Hong Kong on top of the Galleria Mall. And, you know...
It was a fun project, but you get your typical investors or whatever it was that was like, we want to do 500 houses. Oh, let's cut the budget. Now let's do 400 houses. Oh, let's cut the budget. Let's do 300 houses. Now let's go to 200 houses. But you still want to charge the same ticket price. So they crushed, they didn't do it. They didn't put on a good event because the public wasn't happy about what they got. You can't charge the same dollar amount
you know, $50 and tell everybody it's going to be 500 ounces, but then they're like, Oh, now there's two. But, uh,
I wouldn't have taken that project on, even though it was neat to go to Hong Kong, but I was on the plane every other week. Yeah. It was nice in there. Singapore airlines with the suite and everything. That's cool. That was my quiet time, but I wouldn't have taken that, you know, just, you know, and I get, I get requests every day. I got a pumpkin patch request yesterday and stuff. I just, it's not, you know, it's what's the Paula Abdul song, two steps forward, three steps back. I don't, you know, I I've done these things. I've put myself on the map. I've broken every record possible. You know, I don't need to
take on a project. And these aren't just Vegas projects anymore. You're all over the world. I've done stuff in New York. I've consulted for Universal Studios, Busch Gardens. You know, we've done stuff everywhere. And it's been a great journey. But now, like I said, with the IP projects that we're doing, you know, with working with Saw and with working with Blair Witch and we've got three others in the making, which I can't say
Well, let's talk about that. So you transition out of, for lack of a better phrase, just because they transitioned out of you selling your location. Yeah, exactly.
And so you're like, okay, what am I going to do now? I need something that you probably want to control more. A hundred percent. That is not just open one month out of the year and is more controllable. So, and they don't have to tear down. They don't have to tear it down because that there's nothing worse than putting that up and then having to tear it down. I mean, that's, that's upsetting. You've just created something amazing. And 19 days down the road, you're tearing it down. So walk me, walk me through that process of thinking you want to do this to getting it open.
Um, you mean saw? Yeah. Cause that's the first one. Yes. So saw is the first IP after fright dump. So yeah, so saw was the first one we, we approached and I had already worked with landscape back in 2009 cause we did a saw theme haunted house in 2009. So how did you, how did that, how did that meaning come about? How did you approach that? And like you guys had said, it's not easy. Those, they, you don't find studio executives, email addresses on the web. They, they're non-existent and they have layers of assistance in place to prevent the average Joe from calling them. So,
- Bro, I got this movie. - Oh my God. - No, no, no, it's "Godfather" but in space, okay? - It's exactly, that's what they don't want. But they're great people, don't get me wrong. Now we talk Lionsgate literally every single day.
But, you know, so we approached him in 2009. We went to our radio station partner, Kemp Broadcasting. Will Kemp, I think, owns a law firm here in town. Kemp Klufer. Yeah, so he owns Kemp Broadcasting. So they had an in. They were doing a special with Saul the year prior to promote the movie. And I'm like, hey, you know, do you have any kind of in? They went through the marketing department. Then they got us through the location-based entertainment department and whatnot.
we got a meeting and then they, so let's, well, let's, let's look, cause you're brushing over, you brushed over that pretty quick. And I, and I think that's a key piece of information for anybody that wants to license IP. Cause I think a lot of people just tend to bang their head against the closed door without looking for somebody like, Oh, here's the guy that washes the windows that looks through the windows right at the meet where they sit every single day. Let me talk to that guy and see if he can get me around on the window washing unit. Quick, quick, quick story. My buddy became friends with Warren Buffett.
Stays at his house in Omaha when we go to Berkshire Hathaway every year. When he was the richest man on earth. Started off because he adopted a dog from his security guard that he met at Dick's Barbecue or something in Omaha. Really? He literally became friends with the security guard. Security guard had a dog for sale. And then like one of his people and the dogs lived there. And so Buffett's wife...
you know, when you meet someone through dogs, your friends immediately. You can't always call up Warren Buffett. Sometimes you got to make friends. You got to find, yeah, you've got to, this is where like your network is your net worth, right? Because just like you said, I mean, there's nothing harder. I've worked,
In the Hollywood, LA scene for a little bit, there's nothing harder to get through to those people. They have gatekeepers after gatekeepers after gatekeepers. Literally, three assistants. Same with MGM, yeah. WME, a great company now, Endeavor. Literally, they'll have three assistants. One agent will have three assistants before you even get to the agent. That's how hard it is to get to them. Gatekeeper, gatekeeper, gatekeeper. Yeah.
But yeah, you mentioned that. It's hard. I think where people fail with it too is when we go in and present something to the studio,
We give it 110%. And I don't know where I learned this from, but I want to go into that meeting knowing that I gave it our all, that we showed everything we possibly could, put the best presentation possible ever we could put together versus some people coming in with a Word doc and sitting on their desk and thinking that's actually going to work. It's not going to work. You know, and that's where, you know, you got to put your best foot forward because then at least we knew we did everything we could that, you know, to attempt to get that job. And, you know, if they say no, we'll
did our best. Well, I think also when you're dealing with intellectual property of somebody that is owned of something, a franchise like saw, they've got to believe that you're going to treat it.
As well or better than they would. You've got to show them a vision that they're going to look at and say, man, this is just an exceptional opportunity. And these guys have proven themselves to do this. And I think also I would say the reason that you got the opportunity was because you proved that you could run with the ball in that arena before you just grabbed it. Like if you just come off the street and said, I got this great idea. I want to do a haunted house with Saw. They would have been like, who are you?
No, but you were like, I'm the haunted house guy. I think I can take both of our brands to the next level by combining them. And again, showing up to that meeting with a pitch deck that's like, wow. I'm assuming you had art and everything done on this thing. Absolutely, and that's what people don't understand too. Like one of our current studio projects, which I can't say what it is, but you know,
sometimes it can cost us 30, 40, $50,000 before we even get the job. And that's what people don't get in the mic. Oh my God, you did all these renderings, 3d models, all this stuff. It's like, yeah, of course we did. Cause it's worth it because you know, our batting average is damn good. He knows what these projects are. Batting average is really, really good. And you know, we're friends with them.
multiple, multiple studios now. And, you know, we can get them on the phone now. And what used to be hard back in 2009, now it's like, okay, yeah, you want to call Sony? Absolutely. Let's call Sony and see what they got. You know what I mean? So that's what it is. But again, we go in and I'm shocked with some of the other promoters all over the world, big, big, bad promoters and amazing promoters and producers. And I'm like,
you want me to show the studio this? Like, what is this? Like, literally, they've done this in, like, the clip art program. And I'm like...
This is going to be this. Saw and it's the guy. Yeah, it's the guy. I will send you a full-blown 3D walkthrough of what this is going to be before we even get the deal. And that's what you have to do. Well, let's talk more about that when we come back from the break. We'll be back with Jason from just everything. The Saw escape rooms, the whole nine yards. I'm going to get some of the new projects out of them. Probably not. Probably not. We'll be back in a minute.
Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com where we'll share any links that we have things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout.
Back from the break again, joined today. Luckily is Jason from the saws escape room, Blair, which escape rooms here in town are talking about licensing IP and just the incredible business that he has kind of manufactured out of, uh, out of scaring people. It's kind of like, uh,
you know, God cold, if you could get paid every time you would got home five minutes late, I mean, life would be good. Cause I know you're terrified. I got a great idea for you. Um, you can't steal from me right now, but do one of nothing but Mexican women with chanclas and make people walk through it. Just chase you around. You got the whole thing is the whole thing. The whole thing is the whole premise is this is your Mexican wife and you're 20 minutes late.
That's the whole escape room. And she texted you five minutes before. Yes, she did.
Yes, she did. I'm telling you. Don't do this to my chancla. Just a chancla. That's it. I guarantee you'd make money on that. You would. So we're back today. We're talking to Jason about intellectual property, licensing this stuff because he has been able to license some of the biggest brands in the industry of horror are his partners now. I mean, major studios are his partners and he is able to profit very successfully and share profits with these major brands. And if you're kind of wondering how to get...
you know, get a foot started there. This is a great, great conversation to listen to. If you're ever thinking about, man, how do I get something to start it like that? So to recap what we talked about, the first part of the episode was, you know, I think the biggest hinge point key was build some credibility and whatever, whatever angle you want to go, whatever business you want to build. And you can't just start from zero and get these deals. You've got to build some credibility in the arena you're dealing with. And then B don't just necessarily bang your head against the closed door.
Look for that side door, man. Look for somebody who's got a connection to these people any way you can get into them. Because I think just like you, once you start making a little bit of money for one of these guys, they kind of talk. Absolutely. It's a very small world in what we call location-based entertainment department. And you're right. I mean, we've worked with, after it started with Saw, went to My Bloody Valentine. We worked with the late George Romero. We worked with Halloween.
We worked with the collector, the collection, Five Nights at Freddy's when it was at its peak, that crazy video game. Yeah, I'm well aware of my son and all about it. You did a haunted house with Five Nights at Freddy's? I'm the only one that they've ever licensed at Fright Dome. So I'm the only one that they ever licensed their brand to do a live attraction. So we worked with them. And there's so many amazing ones over the years. And Texas Chainsaw Massacre, they're dear friends of mine over there. Amazing. I mean...
So iconic. It's just such a weird thing to say. Yeah, so iconic. I mean, yeah, they made me a skin lamp. It's that kind of relationship. I do have a skin lamp, actually. Well, actually, he does. Yeah, yeah, I do have a severed arm lamp, and it's made out of human skin in the face. Not real, of course, but yeah, it's quite the office at my house. I have an office at my house and then an office at work, too. There's a YouTube video of it. Oh, yeah, yeah, there's absolutely it.
Of your office? Maybe props. By now, people are probably trying to figure out. So I want to get this out of the way. So people want to connect with you. How do they find you? What's the gram? What's the handle? So it's at, what am I at? At Jason Egan Fright. So yeah, at Jason Egan Fright on Instagram. I don't have Twitter. You know, we're at Saw Escape Room and at Escape Blair Witch as well, too. So those are the two that we have out there right now.
Where's the Blair Witch? Where is that? Right next to Saw. Is it the same place? Oh, I haven't done that yet. You have to amortize the cost. You're emptying out in the same retail. Oh, yeah. You know, so now we're building a...
a pizza place called sliced pizza, which is a whore themed pizza place. Cause you know, that, that's a thing too. You know, we have, when you get people on your property, you can get them to spend more if you give them, you know, good, good value. And you know, they're showing up 40 minutes early. You're going to buy a slice of pizza and they're going to play a game. You know, I think nothing proves that more than what is it? The pawn shop guys in there. Oh God. They're geniuses. Yeah. They've, they've got those people just trapped down there. Oh God. Yeah. They're in, in absolutely. They're selling food in line and everything else.
the oratorium used to empty out and do a overhang bar in plant hollywood the gourd i remember yes the gourd they're not a good example no that place guys only lasted 10 months i can tell you i can tell you 10 reasons why they didn't i went through i went through there on opening night it was it was a rough go of it they yeah they picked they picked a little argument with me at the beginning they're like oh what do you think about the news had me on thinking about talking about the competition like oh what do you think about your new fierce competition and i'm like
I'm like competition. I'm like, there are 10,000 square foot exhibit versus my 250,000 square foot exhibit, you know, on the third floor of a Walgreens building with no parking. I'm like, this is not competition. Come on, Eli. You know, before you license your name, think, come on. He's a smart guy. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, you don't, again, that's the answer. He should have said no on that one. You know, he should have learned that. I would have taught him to say no. Like it's not worth the money. They probably, you know, they probably gave him six figures, you know, to license his name. Yeah.
Yeah. And I, and I love that philosophy too. Sometimes, sometimes kids, the best thing you can say to a business deal is no, the best deals I've ever done. They're the ones that I said, no, I mean, you're guys in the real estate business. You know what? My grandfather used to tell me, don't fall in love with bricks and mortar. You know what I mean? Some of these people fall in love with these deals. I'm like, it's just not the right deal. Let's just wait a little bit. One of the studio deals that we're working on right now took two full years of negotiating. And I'm sure a lot of people in my camp are like, you know,
eh, Jason's all talk, he's not going to get that deal. And then when I get it, they're like, oh my God, we didn't think you were going to get this. I'm like, yeah, I stayed persistent. People just don't get it. Sometimes people think that these deals can be put together. That's a great question. Is there a deal that's gotten away? Is there one that you want and you didn't get?
Not yet. That's just dead. No, I'm not going to say anything's going now. What's the, who's the, what's the one that got away, Jason? What hasn't gotten away yet? There's, there's a, you know, it hasn't gotten away. There's some golden gooses. You're still grinding out there. There's, there's a, there's some great whale. Yeah. The Leviathan. It will take time. It will take time. And we'll remember this conversation, but yeah, there's one of the most iconic horror movie characters of all time that we've been, uh,
you know, discussing with their family about, about doing a deal. Tom Hanks. Thank God. Yeah. You did a Tom Hanks one. Yeah.
it would be actual tom hanks come and be like surprise can i take a photo like he does everybody get married on the beach just wants to ruin their freaking throw his picture like is that really tom hanks or like we can't get him to go home guys i'm sorry we've tried for last year he sleeps in the back looks like john travolta yeah no our
our batting average has been really, really good because, you know, a, we go into the deals that we really do want, you know, but our batting average has been stellar. It really has, you know, we put, you know, and now, you know, versus, you know, back maybe 15 years ago, I'd only work on one project at a time.
I don't put eggs in one basket. I'll be working on 10 things right now. I mean, he, Chris knows I'm just go, go, go, go, go seven days a week, you know, and he's probably shocked. I'm like, Hey, you know, now we need a 60,000 square foot property for this. I need a 5,000 square foot property for this. And he's like,
Oh, my God. Do you see a lot of people seeing what you're doing and try and jump in now into the industry? Absolutely. I've seen family members that they don't talk to attempt to ride my coattails, and they think it's so easy, and I've seen them fail miserably. I mean, just...
failures at this stuff and it because they don't get what the formula is and they're missing a very very important piece of the puzzle and that important piece of the puzzle is me they don't know how to do it fire safety regulation oh god yeah yeah they don't know it there's so much stuff that goes into it and then
You know, and I don't want to, you know, rain on everyone's parade, but the stuff's expensive now. You know what I mean? What I could have done for a hundred grand, you know, years ago, you know, is now, you know, millions of dollars. So, I mean, our escape rooms are, you know, well into the millions of dollars now. I mean, there, but again, you know, we,
you know, you build it, they will come, you know, and how it goes with our scapegoats. But now you build it, you work your ass off and hope they show up and they do. Well, let's talk about that for a second because people hear escape room and they're thinking the little joint in the strip mall down the street from them. Exactly. That's the bad perception. If you haven't, like I've been to your, I've been to your place. We went there pretty close to when it opened for my wife's birthday. It's changed a lot. I haven't been there. We'll have to come back then. But I'll tell you this, you know, without giving, first of all, Google this, look it up, look up the saw escape room. It is,
It's like being projected into the movie. You know, my only question about it was smart people, smart people. Cause the first, the first room just crushed us. I won't talk about what it is, but that first area, I,
I think, I think you guys almost threw us out just for being dumb after the first time. I felt that I was coming anyway. Yeah. It's, it's, it's changed a lot and we were constantly every, I have a team that literally is just changing out puzzles all the time. You know, they're, you know, we're, we're dark on Mondays and Tuesdays and they're,
continually doing that but that's you're exactly right you bring up a good point because i hate calling an escape room it's really an escape experience yeah truly attraction i mean saw is 13 rooms seven of them you have to escape and it's it's truly an experience it's an hour hour and 15 minutes long blair witch is like an hour and seven minutes long on average i mean these are big attractions and you know you can't just build a saw experience and have it one or two rooms they have all these movies that you have to encompass yeah and uh so it's impossible but
I mean, it felt real. I'm sure when you went through, you truly felt like you're in an old meatpacking. Oh yeah, no, no, it was awesome. And all that was built by us. It was an, it was a blank canvas when we went in there and you know, that that's the key is making people feel immersed. And the movies even have it easier than we do because they have camera magic. They can hide things. They can hide the ceiling. They can hide the ground. They can hide all this stuff. You're in there 360 degrees. So we have to do it on a lower budget than the movies, you know, it has to do it.
And, you know, everybody's looking all around. They're feeling the things they're smelling, you know, all that stuff. So it's, you know, you have to be smart with it. You have to be a good builder, but we have an amazing team of builders now. No, I think that was the, I think that's the coolest thing about your deal. Like, like you pull up to, you know, an escape room and it says like, you know, escape, whatever. Oh, it's whatever. Like you pull up to this place. It doesn't say anything.
about where you are. Even the throwaway stuff is well done. Yeah, you're completely just immersed in this. Even the stuff that's just window dressing, literally window dressing is well done. We have a facade next door, not even in the same building, but we did a full city butcher facade. So if you're looking in the windows, it seems real when you got the fake butcher counter and everything else. It's just the little things that...
blow people's minds in and what a lot of people did don't realize this how important you know you mentioned instagram and stuff like that are people they say half the reason a person goes out is to get those photos you know that they can post on their social media and stuff like that so we want to be able to give them amazing things to look at we're continually changing our attractions to allow them to take more photos and and post that stuff how long how long has salman opened for him over four years now four years and it's still just booming
You guys are still just every numbers are going up at 2021 was our best year ever. I mean, it was through the roof. I mean, unbelievable. What's your percentage from locals to tours? About 80% tourist right now. Really? Yeah. It's 80% tourist and which is great. And that's what I want because you know, we're, you know, Vegas sees 47 million tourists a year. Yeah. And you know, I love the locals to come down to, you know, you know, that, that,
That's great and that keeps us busy as well. And we try to offer things like through Costco and stuff like that for our local crowds to get bigger discounts. But yeah, that's what's great too. Vegas has a revolving tour. - How are you marketing the tours? - Digital advertising primarily. And then we've got a couple mobile billboard trucks on the road. Sometimes we're running normal billboards as well too. And during October, we'll run a little bit of radio. It just depends.
but primarily digital. Digital is truly where our audience is, and we have an amazing commercial for both Saw and Blair Witch, and if you look at Blair Witch's commercial, I mean, it'll blow your mind. I mean, it was done by a full-blown film studio. You know, I mean, it's like no other escape commercial. Girl from Halloween. Yeah, she's the star. She's the star of the commercial, and she directed it for me, Danielle Harris. Yeah, she's, yeah, so...
Again, these are the little things that you have to do to set yourself aside because, you know, do you want to go to the escape room called the dungeon in that strip mall that you talked about? Or do you want to spend $10 more and go to a brand that you trust? Like saw, you know, the, the multi-billion dollar franchise, you know, that's, that's blown people's minds for, you know what I mean? Nearly 20 years.
What percent, what percent, if you, if you had to guess, I don't know, I don't know. You don't bring a PNL with you and I don't want to get into it, but we try, we try to teach as much business as we can here and we do this. So what percentage of, of, of your sales would you say you dedicate back to marketing to drive future sales? So let me do some math in my head real quick here. I would say our marketing budget right now is $1.
Right around 10%, 10% of our monthly grosses, right where I was at. I think that's a minimum number to continue to drive sales in a tourism. I wouldn't suggest that to everybody. We own an ad agency as well too. So we see a lot better rates than a lot of people. So we're buying billboards, what's called preemptible, which is space available, but we never get bumped off of them. So we get really, really good deals on billboards. We do all of our own digital advertising in-house.
Let's talk about that because that's now interesting. So you're vertically integrating in places where you're spending money, which is near and dear to my heart. I'm a huge proponent of the vertical integration. We do it with everything we do. So we're saving a fortune. So whatever, if we spend, I'm just throwing out numbers here, if we spend $10,000 on marketing, the average Joe would probably spend 25 to achieve the same. Yeah.
Where else are you vertically integrated in your business? Where else? So building. So we've hired in-house builders, sculptors, animatronic builders, graphic designers. We have a creative team that's by far one of the best creative teams. So I've hired people. I hired one of Lionsgate's former creative directors, Justin Yu. So what I'm doing right now is because we're scaling so fast, I'm creating the dream team is truly what we're doing. So I hired one of Disney's former creative directors in Imagineering out of Orlando. Okay.
We hired Station Casinos, former executive vice president of marketing. So I know to expand at the rate that I want to expand that I have to come up with, you know, truly, like I said, I call them the dream team. And that's going to be the way that we're going to be able to expand fast. I don't want to build
one attraction a year right now. I want to, I want to do three attractions a year. I know now what I didn't know 15, 20 years ago, in order to do that, you have to bring on some pretty bad-ass team members. You got to pay them a few bucks, you know, and, and that's what we're doing. So, you know, we're bringing that in house. Like I said, we do all of our own buying in house. Um,
Right now, Vegas is the only market right now that you're just here? That's it? Or are you anywhere else? No, no. We're looking in Texas right now as well, too. So, yeah, we're looking in Austin and Dallas, Texas as well. Are your current licensing giving you first shots at those markets? I can't necessarily say the current ones, but we're working on some other ones. Saw and the people at Lionsgate are amazing. If there was only a horror movie that was based in Texas, you could do it there.
What would it be? If there only was the Dallas daggers, if you know, if you know a Tom Hanks, he's like, it's called like cast away the haunted house. Oh God. Can you imagine that? And just put people in the experience and say, we'll pay you a million bucks. We can make it. We're just going to lock it. We're just going to lock in here long enough till you start talking to a volleyball. That's going to be the end. But,
I mean, that's what's important though. And that's what keeps our budgets down. You know, I mean, so let's say Chris goes in context, a company like think well and says, Hey, I need to be, I want to build the, the saw escape experience. You know, they're going to, they're going to come up with a price because they're doing, he's doing nothing in house. They're going to come up pricing. That'll be 10 to $12 million or,
Or if you go to me, I'm going to bring in less than $3 million because we're doing our own sculpting. We're doing our own dressing of the Billy Puppet. We're doing our own animations. We're doing our own graphics. We're doing our own set. We're doing all that ourselves and not getting it marked up 10 times. So we've definitely been able to take advantage of that, bringing so much stuff in-house. Now, I definitely know when we can't do something in-house. I mean, we have some third-party animation builders that are –
absolutely amazing, some of the best in the world. And we know, you know, they might charge us X amount of thousands of dollars for an animation, we might not be able to beat that price because they do it every single day at scale. So yeah, yeah, we get that. And we're smart enough to make that decision. You know, on our own, or I've made plenty of those mistakes where I think we can do it cheaper and
What makes a good market for you as you look at these other markets and you want to grow? What makes a good market? Tourism, for one thing. We were looking at the tourist markets, the convention market, and location is not as important. Location within that market is not as important as it used to be because I see...
few things changed us and that would be digital marketing. So now, you know, I can get in, you know, there's the same cell phone as Cirque du Soleil can get to, you know, because we have a bad-ass digital team. And then also now, you know, if this was 10 years ago and you told me to create, so I wouldn't have done it because at the current location, because it's a couple of minutes off the strip, you know, it's a, you know, and it, it's not in a hotel, but now with Uber and Lyft, they've changed the
the market forever. I mean, forever. With the touch of a button, you can get a car in five minutes or less to pick you up and take you at a fair price where you want to go and pick them up. It's the greatest thing ever. Now you can get, as you would call in New York, a black car to come get you and stuff like that. You can get a beautiful limousine. You can do everything. I mean, I think they have like Uber Flight in New York as well. Helicopter. Helicopter, yeah. Helicopter, yeah. And some of these markets you're looking at, does like,
Actors unions and those sorts of things play effect in those thoughts probably would you go to LA? Would you do it in LA? I would definitely do it in LA but you know What would scare me the most is you know, I think in Nevada we only got shut down You know for a two month period when there's this whole pandemic. So again not getting political not taking sides in
I'm looking at markets that I know because I'm still a small company. I couldn't get shut down for a year. That's not, that would just crush you. Just destroyed me. And you know, I do appreciate, you know, that Sisolak only shut us down for a certain amount of time, you know, and I couldn't do so while I will definitely do something in California, you know, when everything's cleared up and stuff, but it's an expensive market. You know, you can come, I can come out of town and buy a billboard in this market for $2,000 for a period and
and that same billboard in LA is going to be, you know what I mean? So everything is more expensive there. So that's, that also scares me as well. So what about, what about like Orlando? Too many kids or is that? Orlando is a great market. Love, love Orlando. And you, but you do, you are competing with Disney and Universal Studios and stuff like that. So definitely, you know, we were definitely looking at Orlando as well. I love Orlando. I love visiting there.
And they didn't shut down. So maybe they should have at times. I don't know. But I'm not a scientist. I'm not a doctor. I don't know. But the guy that greenlights projects into Universal CityWalk there is one of my best friends. Oh, there he is.
So I'll be your window washer into that, my friend. We'll talk later. There we go. Definitely. But Orlando's a great market to get the right thing in Orlando. And the good thing is, like we mentioned, I think Colt mentioned it, the price of the Bruno Mars and stuff like that, all that's done. I love when that happens. Thank you, Adele, for charging $1,000 for your ticket because you know what that makes people feel? That my ticket was...
And affordable. And, you know, seeing my 50, 60, $70 tickets, they're like, Oh, that's not, that wasn't even the fee for Adele. That wasn't even a fee for, and they're great performers and they, if they can command that great, keep commanding it, keep going higher because I'm just gonna see more people. I'm going to keep selling out. He just came back to something you said earlier as a good point. Yeah.
You got to be feeling good about yourself. I mean, you got to be feeling. I mean, it's like a walk. That's like a walk off home run for you. It wasn't the Star Wars or Tom Hanks. Yeah. That is a walk off for you, my friend. That's amazing. I'll throw an egg every once in a while. It's so true, though. I mean, it really is. The ticketing fee, the ticket masters charging for some of his shows is more than my entire ticket. It just makes little old Jason Egan make that much more money.
money. And that's it. You know, they come to me and they think, you know, because think about a bachelor party. You know what I mean? People, middle class America could have come to Vegas to throw a bachelor party. They have no idea what that's about to cost them at a nightclub or a strip club. Don't get me wrong. One of my best friends owns a strip club. You saw me in his seats the other day. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yeah. The strip clubs obviously do very well because he's right next to your seats. I don't know what's funny. What's funny is we were always kind of wondering because because the crowd changes quite a bit through there.
And I was always like, there's something got to be, this has got to be something. Something's got to, it's got to be a strip club at some point. And then the little accountant lady was nice enough to be like, yeah, we're here at the Palomino. And not only is the Palomino, that's one of the most iconic licenses in Nevada.
that it is in the country because you can't get it no you're not getting that license so yeah adam's one of my dearest friends but uh colt frequents the place next door that's his spot the other white guy i'm telling you i'm telling you
No, and I think, you know, with your market, you do have to be in the tourist market, right? Because you are putting so much money into your events and stuff that, and they're year-round, that you couldn't do that in a stationary market, do you think? Or, like, in Boise, Idaho, or...
Do you think, you know, is it too costly that you have to redo it every like two years to get people back in there? There's a hybrid model. You bring up a great point. Another great point besides the Tom Hanks. Two for two. You're going out for drinks after a palomino and she goes, what are you doing?
We got a hookup. So you bring up a good point there too. So then what you create is a touring model. So we are of course working on touring models. So let's say we go into Minneapolis and we want to sit down for 120 days and we're
basically suck that market dry for everything we possibly can. And then we don't tour back, you know, we don't go back there for a couple of years until we change the show or put a different show in place. So we don't want to leave out those markets, but you know, they're going to cap at a certain percentage. And yeah, you know, so that's what we would do, you know, it was just bring it back in. The Freakling Brothers, like dirty trailers. Yeah.
No, no, no. Absolutely no death trap. No. It's got to be something that goes into Mall of America or something that has some space that's desperate to get entertainment in there because they're all dying. Very quick death. All these malls. Have you been to a mall lately? Dude, it's brutal. There's plenty of space. Very soon I'll go to a film zombie movie. I'm telling you. Here's my other million dollar idea for the day. You ready? Okay.
A 3D printing equipment that can turn an empty Kmart into mini storage. You figure that out, you're booming. That's what they do in Utah. That's it. Take that. Somebody take that in Roman. I'm not going to. Take that in Roman. I'm not going to do that. All the Kmarts in Utah are indoor storage by you. You do that. I want to back up a little bit because every time we have a successful entrepreneur on the show here, I always like to go back because it seems like everybody has kind of the same thing. So at what age...
was your first money-making gig what were you hustling as a kid that made money the the boring gig was probably when i was like 14 years old and we were doing uh mowing lawns uh shoveling snow and stuff like that but you're hustling but no and we got commercial accounts back then too so i wasn't messing around back then and so yeah we were we were doing that you know i i learned early on when i started making that money and you know then you can buy what you want to
by and not have to think of the store like look at the menu what can I order what can I not order you know what can I afford I don't want that feeling I don't like that feeling you know what I mean yeah I don't need to be driving a Bentley like Chris here but you know I still I enjoy you know if I like this new pinball machine that comes out and I'll
I can just say, hey, text my supplier, hey, I want that new Elvira machine. Can you send it to me? And not even blink an eye. These things are nice. And I got that feeling early on. And I knew that I didn't want to have to. And throughout my career, it broke a couple times. And I don't like that feeling either. Nobody does. Yeah, I knew right then that I wanted to work hard and make my own money. And I was going to be successful.
the person who decides how much money I make. And, you know, we've done, like I said, we've done very, very, very well. And we continue, like I said, once we, if we sit down and have another conversation, a few months, you're going to, your, your mind's going to be blown. And what we are creating right now, I mean, it's, it's so cool. And that's, that's what I like. And I like increasing the size of my team, you know, taking care of my team. We've got such a cool team and for them to be able to do some of the people that were with me for fright dome to do this year round now is, it's exciting, you know, because people, you know,
I don't want to call it a cult, but it kind of is a cult, the horror community. When you love horror, I mean, my whole office is literally like horror collectibles and stuff like that. Like the Star Wars people. What would you know about Star Wars people? I don't know. They're incredibly Jason. Good thing. God.
Don't talk to the guests like that, Colt. What's wrong with you? One of my guys has a Ghostbusters room in his house. I mean, so people really get into this stuff. And, you know, look at, you know, yes, we are working on some friendly projects as well now, but look what's breaking the records, you know, on television. Chucky, I think, broke all sci-fi records on TV. Stranger Things on Netflix, blowing the doors off everything. You know, all these horror shows are just blowing up right now.
And, you know, I mean, some of them, you know, some of these franchises saw is a billion dollar franchise now at the box office. So, yeah, that's that's unheard of. So, you know, people love horror. They love the that safe scare, you know, and going in there. Something oddly human about the precipice and seeing it. It's been through all cultures, all cultures.
through different ages, right? People love the public execution. Like it's just, there's something about fear that feeds you. You know what we didn't talk about? How do we not talk about this? How are we saving this for literally 57 minutes into the production? I'm at Connell's, we gotta tell a story. So I'm at Connell's house, Saturday night we go to Tool and after I had left my car at his house, we get the Uber back to his house and we had a couple of pops in us or whatever and Connell looks at me and goes,
We need to have an experience. I was like, what's that? He goes, I have in my office a spider, a dried tarantula in a can, edible for human consumption. Is that what that picture was? I was so confused. He goes, if you want to have an interesting experience, how would you want to get it? And what was my response, Connell?
Get the spider. Did you guys eat it? Yes. You ate it? We ate the tarantula, yes, we did. But you won't eat that mojada loca? No, that's a good point. I would rather eat a tarantula than that weird wet meat and mojada loca. I'm throwing out. You want some good Mexican food. That is absolutely true. Absolutely true. But Jason, I got one more question. You're braver than me on the spider. I know. I got one more question for you, which is this. Your answer may be a little different than Moe's.
because also you're very high functioning, but with what you do, your hours are probably a little different. Absolutely. So what's your morning like? How do you stay motivated? How do you continue to press? Well, there's no off button. So it's seven days a week. I was hoping for Christmas off, but I even got bugged on Christmas. But that's part of being a business owner, you know, and that's the part of the give and take. You know, my hours aren't 40 hours a week.
But I'm not a morning person. I hate mornings. You know, I absolutely hate it. You know, that's why that's the business that we're in. You know, we're in the nighttime scaring business and stuff like that. But yeah, I'll sleep in until nine, nine thirty, something like that. I'm not the seven o'clock guy. But, you know, I usually like I said, we check my emails and, you know, go through everything that we need to go through. And now a lot of it's delegating a ton of stuff to our team. You know, I used to do a ton of the stuff myself and now.
I am focused primarily on new business development. So that's, that's primarily what I'm doing every day. You know, whether that's talking to the studios, whether that's talking to some of our producing partners, you know, out of New York and stuff, you know, it's all about new business development for me. And I'm, I'm really, yeah, it's all, and it's changed a lot too with the zoom calls and stuff, but you know, it's really allowed me to get things done quicker. You know, I love the one thing that pandemic did do that I did enjoy is, uh,
you know, a meeting, you know, from a meeting, typically if I have to go to a meeting and go meet with someone, you're burning an hour in the car, I'm burning an hour in the car, I'm burning the time, getting ready for it and everything else in a zoom call. I can get the same damn thing done for the most part, you know, with a studio and, uh, in a fraction of the time. So I'm able to be much more effective in, in, you know, getting deals. And if, you know, we have an amazing operations team in place now that operates attractions. I barely have to touch that stuff unless we're
hot heavy in the pandemic and everybody's got coronavirus and I can't, you know, I got to go dress up as a pig, but it's only happened once so far, but yeah, I get punched by the big old guests. But yeah, so I'm focusing a hundred percent on business development all day, every day. I love that. And then, you know, Colt punched a pig in the side too, but it was a palomino.
That's a different story. You're in a weird place. Oh, God. Swear to God, you want to hear a thing? So I have all the original creators of Facebook in, right? Down, and they're driving their car. They do their rally, right? I go...
Got a fun experience for you. Like, where are we going? I'm like, no worries. Are we going to eat a spider? No, worse. I go, we're going somewhere where you guys can't drive your car. Like, you're not taking your Ferraris and Lamborghinis and McLarens to that part of town. So we go, this girl looks like Yogi Berra. I don't know.
I swear to God, I've never seen somebody. Yogi Berra or Bear? No, Bear. Not Bear. The most amazing, that place is amazing. We will go there one night, me and Jason. You're talking about Chica's born in France? Yes. It was amazing. I've never seen such a crazy body type, and it was amazing.
- The views of cold amity do not reflect. - I've only been in there a couple times. I usually tell Adam, like I said, my good friend that owns those places, I'm like, I wanna go see Chico's Paninis. I wanna see what's going on over there. He's like, why? It's really nice over here. I'm like, I just wanna see. - I got it. - You ever seen a train wreck? - It's an experience you gotta go to.
- That business is amazing. That's a whole other, I can't believe how much, you know. - Everyone needs love. - Sexual arson business, SOB business, I mean, just unbelievable. - How much money they make.
Well, Jason, man, thank you so much for coming to join us, man. It was a fascinating conversation. You know, dude, you want to level up with whatever you're doing to the stratosphere. I mean, licensing a billion-dollar entity is the way to do it. Absolutely. And look, man, and this is a cat from Lincoln, Nebraska that grew up hustling, mowing lawns and throwing on kids' birthday parties and has now gone to this. How familiar is that theme?
Yeah. It's always, everybody that comes in, it was hustling as a kid. Always. I mean, you have to, you have to, you have to, and you know, some things just take time. You have to be patient. You have to be patient and keep breaking down the door, keep knocking on that door. And, uh, you know, I mean, I always like listening to Tony Robbins as well, too. I mean, a lot of stuff makes a lot of sense. You know what I mean? And one of the most important things is that that 90 second rule is, you know, 90 seconds of frustration or whatever it is, you know, don't get upset at anything more than 90 seconds. Just, just,
move on and continue and stay positive with it. You know, don't get upset if someone tells you no the first time. I mean, I can't tell you how many times the studios told me no, like three, four times, five times. And literally I've got the emails. No, no, no, no, no. And I keep going at them, going at them, going on. Like, Hey, is anything changed? You know, we have no, and then,
Oh yeah, let's, let's do it. Or when they see the press release and they've seen we've dominated the press, you know, with, with Blair Witch and stuff like that. And they're like, oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. Maybe we can chat now. Where are we at with that deal? I'm like, you declined it. Remember? That's where we are. Yeah, that's where we were, but let's do it. I'm still pounding sand like you asked me to last time we talked. But I'm still ready to do the deal. I still want to do it. And that happens a lot. You just got to be a stay persistent, positive, motivated, and, uh,
you know, surround yourself with good people right there. That's a power move. All right, guys. Well, as we always do, as we always say, man, if you, uh, if you like us, make sure you like subscribe, tell a friend. And if you hated us, tell two, because it doesn't matter if they're talking good or bad about you. What does it call? As long as they're talking about as long as they're talking. See you next time, guys.
Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com where we'll share any links that we have things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout.
