Matt showed up a few minutes early at the address Alberto had provided. It was an otherwise quiet residential street in a neighborhood on the south side he hadn't been to, with a number of cars parked on both sides of the street in front of the address Alberto provided. As he approached, he could hear a small ruckus of sound effects and squealing screams coming from the back of the house. Walking up to the front of the house where the noise was emanating from, he saw a prominent back-lit sign that showed “Apocalypse Experience” in blood-soaked letters along with an arrow pointing down the side alley and toward the garage in back. There a diverse crowd was gathering: kids in high school, young adults, and some couples in their 30s. All told there were maybe 15 people.
A woman with white ash covering her face, pierced only by red contact lenses that gave her eyes an eerie appearance of something from the dead, was busy warning the assembled crowd, “It's coming! It's almost here!” She was wearing a white jumpsuit that looked part paramilitary uniform and part prison outfit. People seemed skittish, frantically laughing, grabbing hold of each other, and delighting in the nervous excitement. “And you must be Matt,” she said, never breaking character and seeming to look right through him. How did she know?
“Yeah, I'm Matt. Alberto invited me,” Matt answered, a little taken aback by being confronted by this apocalyptic space figure, then realizing that he must have obviously stuck out as not the typical customer coming for the experience.
“Alberto – yes. From Zoron, the planet nearing extinction? He is trying to take over our planet. We must expel him!” the woman replied, never breaking her character.
Matt didn't know whether to laugh, jump into character, or get in the car and drive away. The other guests were squealing watching Matt get interrogated by this woman.
“Hurry! HURRY!!” the woman screamed, “The time is coming! Get inside! Go! YOU MUST GO NOW!!” With a scream and a frantic waving of her hands, she directed everybody into the garage. Once inside, she closed the garage door, which triggered a dramatic light show with accompanying sound effects, as if to imply boarding a spaceship preparing for takeoff. The garage was made to look like a kind of modernistic holding cell, an inner chamber of some spaceship.
What ensued was a 30-minute mental journey unlike anything Matt had ever experienced. There were alternating special effects, with a movie projector flashing images and adding a storyline of some dark Overlord coming to prepare the escape to another planet, though time was running out. Another wall projected the time limitations with a series of challenges the group had to resolve in the ever-diminishing time: a burst steam valve, a ceiling rupture, a silence test, building an energy tower. There were objects flying overhead, surprising noises from different corners of the garage, smoke effects, and even scented effects.
It was kitschy in some ways, but within two minutes Matt was completely enthralled. At one point there was a challenge for who would remain behind – a mental trust game – for which Matt volunteered. Toward the end the walls actually begin to collapse inward as people freely screamed and lost their minds in the moment. It was 30 minutes of pure exhilaration. It culminated in some sort of alien creature – gangly, with an oversized head that looked as if it could be a boar's head – emerging from the opposite corner of where the group's focus was, screaming a booming “NOW!” that nearly floored everyone.
Slowly, then, the room lit up, and a set of beautiful spacescape images, bright and welcoming, were digitally displayed on the wall.
“Congratulations,” a robotic, deep throated, and calm voice announced, “You have escaped the Apocalypse Experience. Many, many others have not been as lucky. You have earned your citizenship on the Planet Zalta. But remember, new citizens, that while your taxes are voluntary on this planet, there is limited room on future space escapes, so we recommend you tip your guides very, very generously.”
And with that, the lights came on, and the boar's head mask came off, revealing Alberto, who then puts his arm around the woman Matt presumed to be his wife. They took a bow to thunderous applause, and then handed everyone a home-printed citizenship certificate for the Planet Zalta. People filed out of the now-open garage door, picked up a postcard that encouraged them to share on social media, offered 10% off the next visit, and found a jar encouraging tips. “Want room on the next spaceship? Better pay!”
“What'd you think?” Alberto asked excitedly.
Matt was still coming off of the high and the thrill of the experience. “Man – are you kidding me?? So well done. I mean, I had no idea what to expect, especially when you came into the garage, but it was probably the most intense 30 minutes I've had in a long, long time.”
“This is Maribel, by the way. She's a lot of the vision behind the whole show. She's also the mother of our children.” Alberto smiled as Matt shook her hand.
“I used to act in college,” Maribel started to explain, “and Alberto is really into science fiction and that kind of stuff. We were with our kids at Disney and we were talking about the different shows and effects there and curious about how they make it so entertaining. I don't know how it started but we thought to ourselves that we should try to create something experiential. Why not, we thought. It would be a way to entertain ourselves in the spring and summer and get our kids involved as well. We spent about six months doing research, going to other escape room concepts, reading, thinking, designing, and ultimately designed this whole experience.”
“It's amazing. Really well done.”
“I'm going to get the kids' dinner.” Maribel waved, and made her way into the second story condo behind the garage.
“It's been a journey to get here; let me tell you.” Alberto shook his head.
“There was a time when I thought the whole strategy would be to rent out a storefront next to one of those Halloween superstores. I was looking at signing a 12-month lease for a show that might only last a couple months. I was thinking about hiring a production company. I had a fixed image of what it was supposed to be. I actually wanted the floor to vibrate, which would have been really cool, but would also create a lot of complexity and cost, not to mention the liability. I spent two months alone just trying to figure out the floor. I was stuck trying to work on the wrong things, but I didn't know it.”
“And then you met the Third Shift Entrepreneurs.”
Alberto nodded. “About five months ago. And it's funny, but Renault broke it down really simply for me. He said, ‘What are you trying to do?’ And I went into this elaborate story about the retail storefront, vibrating floor, production values, and everything else. He interrupted me. ‘You just told me how you are going to do it, but back up and tell me what you are trying to do,’ he said, ‘And answer that in terms of the people you are trying to impact.’
“I struggled with that. I had to reframe it in my head and think of it differently. What I eventually landed at was I wanted to create a surprising, exhilarating futuristic experience that left people excited enough to tell their friends about it.
“‘That's it,’ Renault said, ‘That's your answer. The rest is details. Now your challenge is to go create that experience for as little money as possible. In business,’ he explained, ‘that's what's called the Minimum Viable Product, and this would be the Minimum Viable Experience. Create it with duct tape and band-aids, and see if you can actually deliver, and then spend more money and scale it up from there,’” Alberto explained. With the lights on in the garage, Matt looked around and could see that, in fact, Alberto had created the experience with duct tape and band-aids.
“So, we started the shows here in our garage,” Alberto said. “We started three months ago, and we've been sold out for the last six weeks. This is like our little experiment. We are testing the concept to see if it works and then will figure out the bigger opportunity later. In the meantime, though, we have spent $3,400, have generated $9,200 in tips and tickets, not to mention we are taking a tax deduction on our garage as a business expense.” Alberto smiled and chuckled a bit, taking in the surprising success that had ensued these last several weeks.
“The reality,” he continued, “is that people like the fact that it's in our garage. It's sort of silly and different and original. We got a story in the Chicago Reader last week highlighting us and this pop-up concept. So, there is now bigger interest and a lot of inbound calls. We actually just got asked last week if we would host this experience at a company holiday party in the winter – something that we are looking at maybe doing.
“That's awesome,” Matt replied. “I mean the show is strangely enthralling – truly.”
“See,” Alberto continued, switching to teacher and mentor to Matt, “it's easy to focus on the wrong stuff. So, let me ask you: What are you trying to do?”
“Well, it's interesting you ask because I've actually been having a couple conversations about just that. I'm not exactly sure but I want to get finance professionals together who have a passion for their physical health and the outdoors – climbing, hiking, being in nature. Things like that. I don't know exactly what this audience needs but I believe there are other people like me out there and I want to bring them together to determine how I can add value. I want to be a finance professional who is passionate about their mission of encouraging connection to the outdoors. I'm not sure if that makes sense yet but that's what I'm leaning into.”
“Renault would just tell you to solve that problem right now. It's not about some fancy business yet, or co-op, or anything other than Matt just going around solving the problem. You see, in my space right now some guy is running around with some perfect PowerPoint pitching Disney about some big idea of an experiential entertainment concept that he wants to create, and he is trying to convince them that he knows how to create it, and how great it will be, and all this other stuff. Meanwhile, I'm over here…and 12 people just left my garage and actually just had an incredible experience, and I actually just made…,” Alberto pulled cash out of his pocket and looked in the tip jar, “about $400.”
Alberto put the cash back in the tip jar. “Can I tell you the best advice I ever got? It's this: doing is the new resume. It's one of the hustle hacks Renault now uses. I thought to myself I'm not qualified to do any of this stuff. My wife and I don't have anything that someone else would look at and say, ‘Oh. Hire these guys. They'll be perfect!’ No – we don't have that. But it turns out you don't need that. The person who does it, is the person who is qualified. So, we are now the experts on how to hold pop-up experiences in your garage. And it's not because we majored in it, wrote articles about it, or raised money to do it. It's because we just started doing it. Some people think you need expertise in order to start doing the thing, but that's backwards. You need to start doing the thing in order to earn the expertise. So, for you: go out there and show a passion for the mission of those finance professionals working in support of the outdoors, whatever that is, and I'm sure their needs will arise for you to serve. Starting with your own needs is actually a great place to start. It sounds like, don't take this the wrong way, but that you're a successful guy who works in finance who doesn't get outside enough, misses some camaraderie with other like-minded outdoorsy type people, and wants more adventures like hiking and camping. If you solve that need for yourself, it's likely other people out there have that same need as well and you'll be solving it for them, too.”
Matt nodded slowly. “That makes sense. At least I hope so. I'm nowhere near where you are with what you have done here.”
“Well, don't compare what you are doing to what I am doing,” Alberto said. “You work in finance – it's going to look different potentially. For me it's a whole production, and for Chad it's the salon series to sell maps. For Yisel it's the coffee, but for you it might just be demonstrating through conversations your passion for supporting finance professionals working in an area you are passionate about.”
“Well, I'm actually starting by organizing a climbing club. Just an excuse to bring people together for free to climb and build some relationships,” Matt said, realizing that he had in fact put a stake in the ground for what he was planning to do next even if he didn't have figured out how it would ultimately be monetized, or if it would ever be a business.
“Well, there you go. That's acting like a Third Shift Entrepreneur. You're out there taking action, bringing people together to go climbing, and the needs will be determined in time. Your customers will co-create that with you. Once you're up close and personal with them, you'll know. I think you've already started in a sense. Alberto's words meant a lot to Matt. In another context he might have dismissed him as a goofy guy running some illegal entertainment operation. But standing with him in his garage, having just witnessed an exceptional performance in which he made a few hundred dollars, Matt had this deep admiration. This guy is a real entrepreneur – that's what he is.
“Listen,” Alberto abruptly cut the conversation short, “I gotta go – Maribel is gonna kill me if I'm not in for dinner and bath time, which I promised tonight. But I do have to share one more thing that I think is important. Feel free to ask for what you need to be successful. When this got going, it was too many hours in the day between my day job and this thing. I was thinking about quitting my job and going all-in, which is what I assumed you would have to do if you are starting a business, but the Third Shift crew jumped in and told me that would be a dumb idea. The money you earn in your day job is money you need in order to keep the side hustle going, right? But I looked at it and said I could get by on less, particularly if the Apocalypse started generating revenue. I figured I could, temporarily, get by on 60% of my income. So, I did something that the group encouraged me to do that I didn't think was even an option: I asked my boss if I could work 60% of my current hours, or even move me to a contractor status. I would let him pick the hours, which gave him flexibility. I felt weird asking for it, but he said it wouldn't be a problem, and it actually allowed him to manage the team schedule more easily. I can go back full time later, but for now this is a good solution. Don't be afraid to think about knowing what you want, first of all, and then asking for it. I'm glad these guys saved me from myself. I would have likely quit a job, become broke, and be sitting with a 12-month lease in some strip mall somewhere.”
“Matt, is he talking your ear off?” Alberto's wife, Maribel, called from the back window, “Alberto, let the poor guy go. Dinner's ready.”
Alberto turned to Matt. “Hey, I appreciate your coming out. See you Tuesday with the group. Text me if you need something. Oh, and I want to ask if you can commit to getting 12 more people to come to the show?”
Matt was surprised by the specific request. Getting 12 more people to come seemed a little ambitious but given how much Alberto had shared and the fact that he had given him 2 free tickets, one of which he didn't use, he felt not only compelled but pleased to do it.
“Done,” Matt said. “Maybe I'll bring the new hires over for this experience. Regardless, I'm good for it.”
They shook hands on the deal as Alberto sprinted inside. Matt wandered away thinking about what he had just experienced. He had seen these alley garages thousands of times but had never envisioned one could become a theater. What else was he not seeing in the world around him?