As I am winding down operations for 2015 I decided to run some numbers.
Keep in mind that this time last year I was running the numbers for this first operating season which started in starting April.
I took all of my monthly expenses, hourly operational costs, and annual depreciation into consideration. I was trying to figure out what I needed to charge per hour in order to make it worth doing. In order to do that, I had to come up with a reasonable expectation of how many hours I planned to operate in 2015.
I am not sure all the in’s and out’s of how I arrived at 56 hours, but it had something to do with maybe a 2 hour engagement every other weekend expecting that sometimes I would do more than one in a day or longer engagements on occasion. It seemed like a conservative number but I was hoping to not overbook since I wasn’t sure how the simulator would hold up or how much energy I would have left.
So after all is said and done, with the last booking on the schedule for next week before Thanksgiving, we came to 57 hours operated this season. I thought that was remarkable how close my initial estimate was.
Overall the private engagement (Groupon, LivingSocial) was kind of disappointing, but we had a couple all-day runs that were successful (Maker Faire, KC Air Expo) and a few half day engagements around town for summer camps and the like.
It should be noted that no one paid the full retail price, so overall we are reporting a loss for 2015. Not sure what the plan is for 2016 but I think we have a solid baseline if we are giving it another go!
