An update to get you up to speed...

Last night I sent this out to friends and family who we have not kept up to date in the last few months. I think it does a good job of bringing things up to date on what David and I have accomplished thus far with Parmasters Orlando. Have a look...in a future blog, I will go through what we did in Las Vegas!

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Good evening all! I hope you all had a wonderful Mother’s Day. Especially if you are one of the many mothers on this list. We had a pretty nice Mother’s Day here at my house. Lisa’s mom and dad, Gina, Teresa and David (and all the kids of course) were here and we had a nice spread of food. While sitting around discussing the future, we thought it would be nice to share how things have progressed with Parmasters with everyone else we have mentioned it to over the past 9 – 12 months, but haven’t necessarily kept up to date for one reason or another.

Below is a pretty broad snapshot of what we have been up to:

In November, David and I went to Vancouver, BC and received our franchise training and learned all the ins and outs of Parmasters. We had a very productive week while we were there and came home with lots of tools to help move us along. Shortly thereafter, we focused in on the family as the Holidays were upon us. With the economy on a downward path…straight down…things really started to move along at a snail’s pace, but no sense in holding back now!

In January, we attended the PGA Merchandise Show here in Orlando and made many contacts and met with a lot of our future vendors. During this time, Mike and Mario (our regional franchisors), along with Scott Hazledine from headquarters (Chief PGA pro for Parmasters), were here for the show and to help us look at several possible sites for us to begin construction. Although we looked at several sites, none really were what we wanted in our first center. Still, it was another productive week!

A few months went by and David and I attended many meetings with local business groups, including the Orlando Chamber of Commerce. A lot of networking and relationship building went on during this time. In April, we had another round of sites to look at…with a lot more success. There were a half dozen that really looked good. We narrowed it down to three and at this point, we are looking to send offers to lease to all three to see which one can give us the best deal.

Immediately after that round of site selection, David and I went to Las Vegas for our annual center owner/area developer conference. Yes, Las Vegas. Believe me, I still get “that look” from Lisa. Seriously though, David and I were unbelievably busy while there. The week really did go by way too fast to enjoy being there. I could put together an entire e-mail describing the progress and positive things that came from going, but I will spare you the details. It is, however, worth noting though that it was time and money very well spent on going.

At the beginning of this month, David and I traveled to Memphis, TN to meet with someone who expressed an interest in being a part of our team. As you may or may not be aware of, our biggest hurdle at this point is raising the capital necessary to open the doors. The individual we met with in Memphis seems to be fairly well connected and we are hoping to leverage his contacts and really broadcast the opportunity we have for people willing and able to take the risk on us. It was a successful meeting in Memphis and it looks like things may start to really pick up in the next few months. Time will tell.

As I said, I sent you this update because at some point either David or I discussed Parmasters with you. In the event you might have been curious as to how we were coming along, I wanted to provide an update. Through David’s expertise in website development, we now have a website that is a little easier to get to. Check it out from time to time. www.parmastersorlando.com . We have our twitter feed on there (@indoorgolf), so you can always see what we are doing at any given moment. I am contemplating asking David to institute a “blog” link and I can expound on what we are doing there. 140 characters (twitter limit) does not allow for much of an update!

I suppose I have gone on long enough. If you are still reading this after all of that, thank you for taking the time to do so. And thank you for being interested. We both always eager to babble on about what we are up to with Parmasters, so drop us a line some time. OR, hit us up on twitter. And of course, if you do not want me to e-mail you about this anymore, please feel free to let me know.

Take care and Happy Mother’s Day!!!
Charlie