Actually my whole concept was great. Everyone who actually went had a great time. Not many NPC shows get the national attention we had before and after the show. Our bikini contest was featured in some magazine having to do with pagents. I can't remember the name but they did a really nice story on the show. Pics from the show were in numerous other magazines. The biggest problem I had was help. I basically did 100% of the planning myself. I did every thing that had to do with doing everything. Pam Betz wanted to help but wanted $10,000 plus expenses. I had lots of sponsors, lots of competitors. My gymnastics event was awesome. The problemwas the parents who demanded to come into the show without paying. I had one lady who stayed in the expo for 3 hours. She came out and wanted her $10 back. I said you were in there for 3 hours you said. She said yea but what I was looking for wasn't here and you advertised $1 million in exotic cars and no way is there a million dollars in cars there. Well my friend John Browning who is part of the Browning firearms family is the one who gave me the cars and was standing there when she said that got a little pissed. He had his Ferrari F40 there which was $300,000 by itself and a few other fancy exotic siad she was full of shit. SO then she said "I know the mayor and I'm going to tell him how your sho is ripping people off." So I said good call him and tell him Keith Jones did it and see what he says. I laughed so hard cause I play the mayor in racquetball a couple times a week and he is my friend. Anyway, the show was great and would have been even better if I had the help. As for the ticket takers. The convention center requires that company to do it. I mean I carpeted the entire floor of the expo about 30,000 sq ft. The room was close to 100,000 sq. ft. ft. with the other space filled with grandstands (not seats) for the jiu jitsu, grand stands for the powerlifting, 5 stages a big sports card show. An entire area for the gymnastic events. Was a bummer. Plus upstairs I has a movie theater playing movies. I feel bad for all the sponsor that came from the mainland. They spent allot fo money. VPX like I said was great. SO was GLC and the other mainland companies that came. The whole 3 day show cost about $190,000 we brought in about $90,000 in sponsor money. Tickets sales (what we got) was around $30,000 total. We lost around $60,000 or so.
And I always do things in a big way. I like taking a risk. I have done where it has paid off greatly and lost some. But I figure if you don't take a chance that you'll never know. All I know it was fun
