![]() ![]() "It's an industry that's going up in revenue," she recalls discovering.Īfter Melissa quit Clear Channel, she and Richards collaborated on all aspects of the business, designing wardrobes and special effects, and courting investors, which ranged from former Clear Channel clients to friends willing to put in some cash. She turned to her own childhood in New England, where she rode haunted hayrides, for inspiration and began researching the $6.5 billion Halloween industry and learned that it was actually growing instead of shrinking during the recession. "A lightbulb went off: Clearly there's something here," Melissa remembers. ![]() One night, Melissa looked out her window and found several hundred people lingering in her decorated yard. "As I climbed the ladder, I got more and more responsibilities." After moving to Los Angeles, she became one of the company's leading sales reps, designing multi-platform events for clients and managing "millions of dollars." "I learned about working as a collective group instead of as an individual," she acknowledges. "Corporate America," Melissa explains, "had nothing to do with the haunted house business," but she learned business skills at Clear Channel (now IHeartMedia), where she took an entry level job after graduating from the University of Connecticut in 2000. A lot of people have huge goals, but most of the time that goes unrealized." I wanted to start documenting it all and talk about it with people who are aspiring to be the same thing. ![]() "There were lessons that would keep showing themselves, lessons that would keep occurring. "I went through corporate America," she points out. Ten Thirty One Productions has grown into a multi-million dollar business according to its eternal evaluation, with Mark Cuban investing $2 million-and Melissa is pulling a Cuban herself, spouting her business acumen in a new book called Ready, Fire, Aim: How I Turned a Hobby into an Empire. Today, the Haunted Hayride is one of the most popular Halloween attractions in Los Angeles. "People thought I should be certified as crazy!" If she was crazy, she's now a crazy millionaire. "I had a lot of raised eyebrows," Melissa recalls in a phone call. ![]()
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