Greetings, true believers! So, my apologies to all of you who may not be quite as thrilled as me about the new "lite" version of my upcoming arts center, which I am just now starting to actually implement, in preparation for us actually opening for business this September; today's entry, after all, now marks nearly 8,000 words in a row I've written on the subject this week, and I know that some of you are itching for me to get back to more varied and general subjects as well. Oh, but it's just so exciting for me, you know? After a year and a half now of doing nothing more than educating myself about business, reading books and participating in discussion boards, writing to every damn business expert who would possibly accept my letters, all in preparation for the moment my center will be ready to finally be opened... that moment is finally here. And that's thrilling to me, to be frank, because I've been itching to finally start putting some of my ideas into place, to actually start recruiting people and venues who would be interested in getting involved. So I hope you all will forgive me for going on and on about it so much this week.

The good news for people like this is that I only have one more topic to go over, concerning the lite plan; and this one may be of special interest to all you more business-oriented readers, because it concerns just how much money I think it's going to take to get the center up and running by September, as well as how much money I'm expecting the center to take in and pay out over the course of our first year. And this, of course, is the number-one reason to do a lite version of the center in the first place; because the figures are so much lower, just so dramatically lower, that it's what will let me actually have the place up and running by this fall, versus sitting around for another four years or so, trying to raise the money for the full version.

For example, under the full plan we would need a total of $40,000 for startup costs; while under this lite plan, I'm anticipating total startup costs of merely $500 to $1,000 (250 to 500 pounds, 300 to 800 euros). And the majority of this money to is basically cover the costs of the tech equipment we will need as a roving center, doing shows in a variety of outside venues around the city; two microphones, for example, two mic stands, a speaker with its own amp and mixing controls, a Sony Minidisc recorder, and a wheeled dolly for getting it all from one venue to another. And then of course this figure also reflects the costs of registering the center with the state of Illinois (so that we're all legit and shit), securing the URL for the center, and printing an initial round of paper brochures for the center, explaining who we are and how one can apply to be a Member or Fellow. (Oh, and to get at least a dozen or so t-shirts printed, just so they'll be available even at our first event.)

But of course, even this number may change by the time September rolls around; some kind hosting service, for example (perhaps run by one of you...hmm) might cut us a break on our website costs, just because they believe in what we're doing; or I might be able to find a screenprinter or commercial printer who'd be willing to cut us a break in exchange for being a corporate sponsor; or maybe someone sympathetic to the cause will end up donating their old Minidisc recorder to the center, so that we wouldn't have to buy a new one ourselves. Anyway, like I said, even in a worst-case scenario I'm not imagining this stuff costing any more than $1,000 to acquire; and once this stuff is acquired, of course, we will be fully prepared to actually start producing events, selling merchandise, publishing books and the like.

And then as far as our actual operating costs and revenue, once we are up and running, I've been trying as much as possible to maintain very realistic goals for all this, and in some cases even to underestimate how much money certain things will bring in, just so that we'll be prepared in case things do go that slowly. For example, under the lite plan we only need to sell 15 memberships over the course of the entire first year to meet our budget goals, and only sell 25 t-shirts (for a grand total of $1,000 in revenue). And let's face it, if the center takes off in the way I imagine it will, we'll end up selling a lot more of both of these by the time the first year is done; but, following the advice all these business experts are always giving, I'm putting the estimate at this low amount anyway, just in case things go horribly wrong, and it ends up that I am in fact full of shit. (And boy, let's make no mistake; there is always the chance that I am completely full of shit when it comes to the plans I have for this center.)

So then as another example, those who have been following along this week know that I'm hoping to publish a total of three paper books over the course of our first year; or, that is, three mini-books, only 40 to 60 pages in length, printed simply and hand-assembled by our staff, in order to save on costs. (For those already familiar with basement-press publishing, our publications will be higher in quality than a chapbook, but not quite as high as a trade paperback, bound Japanese-style so that it'll be a little easier to assemble.) And I'm anticipating these books to cost around $1 in raw parts for each copy; so if we end up publishing three books, and 100 copies of each, that's a total of $300 the center will spend on them by the end of the year.

So then the books will be sold to the public for $5; and I'm hoping that we'll be able to sell a total of 75 copies per title, with the other 25 sent to Web Members as part of their benefit package, litbloggers for possible review, etc. And if we were to do that, total revenue would be $1,125, although we'll just call it an even thousand today to make things simpler. And then of that $1,000, half of it (or $500) would go directly back to the authors in question as their royalties; and so that would leave the center with $500 in revenue as well, or basically a profit of $200. And again, I am not anticipating any problems with selling 75 copies apiece of each of our first three books, and in fact imagine that we'll end up selling even more; but like I said, I'm deliberately keeping the number low for now, just in case things do go horribly wrong and it ends up just being this herculean effort to sell just these 225 books alone.

Okay, so now we get to the subject of live events, where it starts getting trickier; because this will be our main means of raising money and getting artists paid, because of a cover fee attached to each event we produce, but is also an area of operations that's difficult to reliably estimate, because of the fickle nature of live audiences. So, for example, I'm shooting for a goal of averaging $100 in gross revenue at each event, which basically boils down to 33 paid audience members per event; and I'm anticipating us producing around 50 events our first year (not counting the bookstore series I mentioned earlier this week, since events there will be free to the general public), which will hopefully mean a grand total of around $5,000 in gross revenue over the course of the first year.

But the tricky part, see, is that such attendance is not going to be evenly distributed; once it's finally time, for example, for our slam finals to roll around next May, it wouldn't surprise me if we had 100 paying members just at that event alone, while we can undoubtedly expect other shows that might only have 4 or 5 paying customers altogether. And this is tricky, of course, because the center's expenses per event are fixed; that is, at every event we will need to pay our feature $50, and the host $20, regardless of how much money the event itself ended up generating (or else risk picking up the reputation as a place that can't pay its artists, a reputation that I want to avoid at all costs). So at some of the events the center will make a nice, tidy little profit; and then at other events (especially those in the first six months), the center will actually take a loss, and the money for paying our features and hosts will have to come out of my personal pocket. And this, frankly, is why the plan this entire time (both the full one and the lite one) depends so much on the center doing a whole variety of little things, and having small amounts of revenue coming in from all over the place; because let's face it, we can pretty much guarantee at least a certain amount of live events that will actually produce a loss instead of a profit, and the way we'll make up for this and keep everyone paid will be through book and merchandise sales, Memberships, etc.

So, then add another $500, $600 or so in expenses, for the extremely limited amount of paper brochures and flyers we'll be printing, as well as continued t-shirts throughout the year; and then finally add the salaries for both Nikki and myself, which at this point are $1,000 for each of us. (And this is with the understanding, of course, that it is our salaries that are the first things cut, if the center ends up not making as much money as I'm anticipating; and Nikki understands this, and has already agreed to such a thing.) And so if you add the entire thing together (as I have in my little business plan here at home), you come up with expenses for the first year of around $6,500 (including my and Nikki's salaries), and revenue for the first year of around $7,000 to $7,500. Which should hopefully leave us at the end of year 1 with a profit of somewhere around $500 to $1,000, which we will then use to print the "Best Of" trade paperback at the beginning of year 2, which will then be our big annual fundraising project, to try to replace some of the tech equipment that will undoubtedly be pretty beaten up by that point.

So anyway, I think that's finally it, as far as getting all the details of the lite plan out to all of you; and like I said, I appreciate the patience all of you have shown this week, who are not necessarily as into all this as I am. And it goes without saying, of course, that you should always feel free to write in with your thoughts on everything I've been talking about this week, and especially if you see a glaring error in my logic that you think should be brought to my attention. And this is just a general invitation as well, by the way, to all you new readers - that I actually love hearing your comments, but unfortunately can't run a commenting system here at the site, because there's just so many people out there who fucking despise me as well, who have tended to just flood my comment section with piss and vinegar, anytime in the past I've tried to implement such a thing. Anyway, you should always feel free to drop me a line, anytime you have a random thought that was inspired by this journal; and if you don't want to get that intimate, of course, you can also always write up your thoughts at your own blog, and if there's a link to my site I will end up seeing it in my Technorati and Google watchlists. So anyway, that's that!

And now, ladies and gentlemen...

One of the things that's been really surprising me the last two weeks, as I start discussing this lite plan with friends and possible partners, is just how incredibly excited other people are getting about this plan as well, in a way that no one ever got concerning the full plan. And at first this was a real mystery to me; because in my eyes, the lite plan isn't nearly as impressive a thing as the full plan, and it's been a real shock to me to see all these people embrace the lite plan in a way they never embraced the full one.

So I was talking with my dad about this the other night, and he reminded me of one of those business issues that is just so basic, so self-explanatory, that I feel like an idiot now for not understanding it myself: that, duh, execution always beats strategy. That is, you can come up with the most brilliant plan in the world, something that would just shake our entire society by the toes, and that would profoundly change all of our lives in a dramatic way; but still no one's going to give a shit until you actually start doing stuff.

For a guy who's always going on and on about "do it yourself" this, and "proactive" that, I've realized this week that I've been making a really stupid mistake when it comes to my center; I've been assuming that others would get just as excited as me about the plans for the center, even with it being nothing more than a 20-page Word document, while in fact what really gets people excited is when you go out and actually accomplish things. It's been a humbling experience, to tell you the truth, and reminds me of something that I need to be reminded of more often these days - that no matter how smart I think I am, no matter how on top of all this stuff I think I am, there are always childlike basic lessons about it all that are flying straight over my head. And even worse, I don't even realize they're flying over my head, until the moment some random stranger stops me on the sidewalk and says, "Uh, excuse me, but you do realize that you're not wearing any pants, right?" It's an embarrassing thing to admit, to be sure, but something I think that is important to admit, anytime you're going into a situation where money and other people's lives are involved. So anyway, there you go - proof that even the most intelligent people out there can sometimes be drooling idiots as well. It's a lesson I'm going to try to be embracing more, both here and when it comes to my center.