No job, hockey player, and in high school, I was just a bored little kid with an idea to make my hometown more fun - mini golf. But how in the world do you start a dream with no money? Well, let me tell you!
Sponsorships
We need $18,000 to own this course. With me, my brother and a friend combined wallets, we were about $17,980 short.
We were forced to get creative for funding, and our solution was sponsoring each hole with a local business.
In exchange for $500-$2000 depending on the hole, the business purchasing the sign would receive this advertising for the life of the course.
Obtaining the Sponsors
The idea was there, and now it was time for the execution. We had to pull up our salesman pants.
But it turns out, we had to buy salesman pants first.
Our first round of pitching our idea to sponsors was a fail. And the second. And third. We were learning sales skills the hard way.
We first needed to first become trustworthy. We were young, and didn’t know what we were talking about while asking for a large sum of money. To build trust, we dressed in suits, understood what we were providing inside and out, and had a lawyer create a contract showing that the transaction was legit.
We then had to tailor our pitch to the individual. At first our pitch was “we need money for our course, want to buy a sponsor?” But implementing the idea of tailoring the pitch to them turned our pitch into “We have a miniature golf course with an expected audience of 400/day, for only $500 you can sponsor a hole and advertise your business for the life of the miniature golf course.” Now that's what they want to hear.
Finally, we realized we were pitching to the wrong people. A funeral home would never advertise their business at a miniature golf course, that is not where their customers are. We needed to find businesses that shared customers with our business, and once we realized this, our success rate went up.
Taking Care of the Sponsors
We didn’t treat our sponsors as a one and done transaction. We took care of them. We gave
them free mini golf, free snow cones, and recommended our sponsors to the mini golfers
that came in.
And by taking care of them, they took care of us. Businesses recommended our course to their customers which provided us customers we wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Creating relationships is great advice.
Make Your Dream Come True!
If you have a dream, you can make it come true. All you have to do is be creative! Be creative with your funding, provide value and understand how to pitch your idea. And for those that invest in you, create a lasting relationship. That’s how you can begin your own dream.