Westold

Never doom.

Horses are fraudchecks. You have to possess certain virtues to mount one.

If you die before you die, then when you die you will not die. *tips hat*

Well I’ll be

@SeraphimPrints Lol sounds about right. Somehow we had a three-way tie for first place tonight - I was the loser. Everyone happy including me 😆

@westold Nice!! We decided we should probably get Jr. for next time. Our littlest rage-quit pretty early on🥴😂

Kind of a baller 🤷🏻‍♀️💅

This weekend and last I took an all day sabbath from my phone and especially this app on Sunday. Highly recommend. Course I finally checked late in the evening like I’m doing now. But still, the dividends of a 90% distraction free Sunday for church, family and friends are real.

@nicholascarrigg Worse, equal, or better than a quarter pounder?

Really enjoying this impromptu Japan appreciation detour on X right now. From one cowboy to a samurai, the respect is mutual.

@HSchenewark Really looking forward to following along on this experiment.

@westold Haha that’s hilarious!

Here's my bounce house business plan for this summer. I bought two units, a large slide, that can function dry or as a water slide, and a combo unit, that has a bounce house and a slide on each side. All in, the units cost $2,774. They should arrive next week, and are shipping from NY. These are called "rental lite" units, so they're not quite as sturdy as full commercial units, but they shouldn't have a problem getting through a couple seasons. Rental strategy is centered entirely around Facebook. We'll have them up on marketplace, and then will advertise on facebook groups. Facebook groups are magic and it's amazing how much business you can get from them. Depending on how often they're rented out, we might run some facebook ads during June and August. Not sure on that yet. No plans to setup a website, although that could change too. We will have a facebook page though. Talking with the Bounce House Guy, @jeshoopes , he said pricing should be at least $289 + delivery for the combo, and $275 + delivery for the slide. We'll test it out, but that's where we'll start. Nearly all rentals happen during May-August, with July being the busiest month. I can help with delivery and set-up/takedown as needed, but the plan is to have one of my employees (hardworking and ambitious 19 yo) handle most of them. The delivery fee will be $50, and that will go to him, as well as another $25-50 depending on location and time to setup. My goal is to clear $250 per rental. I hope to increase the average rental amount by offering my tables as an add-on, as well as renting out for 8 and 12 hr blocks. 12 hour option will be $50 more. If we're profiting $250/rental, then we need to have 26 rentals, or 13 for each of them. Finally, we're making one more investment, and that's in a $1,500 soft serve ice cream machine that we can rent out too. I'm still comparing models, so if you know someone who's rented them, I would love to get their opinion. We spent $2,774 on the two inflatables, and after another $1,500 for the ice cream maker, we'll be in over $4k. Debt gets tricky fast, and we are going to stay on top of it, but we opted to purchase these with a 12 month 0% interest credit card. It seemed like the perfect use case for the card, as it's a low-risk investment. To pay off the units, we need to hit 11 total rentals, so it seems like a very low-risk investment. Plus, the units could always be sold, and in a fire sale, I think we'd still get 50% no problem. So really, our downside is protected after 5 rentals. What's the upside? We've got 18 weekends from May 1-August 30th. I'd love to rent each unit once per week. That would get us 36*$250=$9,000. So not unrealistic we'll 3-4x our money this season. I'd keep renting them out next year too. If this goes well, I don't see me buying any more units and trying to grow it, I'd keep it small and simple. Of course, I had no plans to buy these two, so I won't commit to a set course yet. This isn't a full-fledged business, just some fun money, so we're not getting insurance. That cuts out the commercial market, so we'll focus entirely on the backyard birthday party crowd. Facebook is perfect for that. We are 30 minutes from Branson, so there's lots of family reunions and visitors who come into town. Insurance would be $4k/year, and that's beyond the scope of what we want to do with this. This is a fun business and for fun money, so if we can hit $6500 by September, we'll pay off the units, and we're going to England for our anniversary. My initial motivation was so my very high-energy boys could have a jump house in the backyard and we could enjoy soft serve, but now I want to hustle a little more and make this trip to Europe happen. Regardless of how much money I make, I hope this is the best summer yet of their lives. If you found this interesting or useful, or have thought about starting this business, and want to see how it goes, I'll share progress and financials as the summer progresses.

@HSchenewark Honestly as I was typing my reply I was thinking “this guy is already probably a lawyer” 😂

I’m a lawyer 😀 not offering legal advice but basically, the commercial clients want to avoid liability and so require insurance, but as long as everything is setup properly, and with proper disclaimers as to the inherent risks of using a jump house, there shouldn’t be any liability

@dissidntdad Are you familiar with Seattle based @filson? They still larp as an authentic American brand (and do a convincing job of it) but have steadily moved most of their manufacturing overseas just in the last decade. It’s criminal. x.com/i/grok/share/d…

I’d like to be able to buy a $200 knit sweater made by local New England makers, and a $100 one made in America by large industrialized makers. I think the two go hand in hand and are necessary for a successful reindustrialization of America and creating a rooted economy again.

Growing up is finally admitting that you secretly enjoyed the band Creed all along.

Something about plain ice cold sparkling water just slaps in your late 30s.

It’s finally time to burn my Christmas tree in the backyard fire pit.

@SeraphimPrints @globalismslayer Thanks for the info I appreciate it! I will DM you.

@westold @globalismslayer Hi! I have been tagged a couple times and this is definitely one of my lines of work, but I have kind of a full stack of projects at the moment. If you want to shoot me a message about what you need specially, I may be able to take the work on later in the spring. 🙂

Can anyone recommend a "based" graphic artist that would work with me on some Westold branding and maybe a graphic tee? Looking at you @globalismslayer

The best part about being a dad is I only care to impress my wife and children. Everyone else? Not necessary.

Edit: Looking for American designers only.

Today’s required reading for my children. In this house, Christopher Columbus is a hero.