Coming Soon!

Over the past two years, David Titus has been working hard to open a business in Lansdowne, PA. With great pleasure, we'd like to fill you in about what's been going on.

The overall concept is to bring film and video to the public, but by no means is this a simple prospect. Now, for a little background information.

Before moving to Lansdowne, David started Films at the Sedgwick and screened films at the Sedgwick Theater in Mt. Airy. He helped to open the Little Theater at the Video Library. Now organized by the Video Library's owner, the Little Theater continues to be a neighborhood mainstay in Mt. Airy.

Now living in Lansdowne, David Titus has been actively seeking to do the same in Lansdowne. Cinema 16:9 will be a permanent movie venue in Lansdowne, offering a destination for movie fans around the Philadelphia area.

Over the past few months, there has been a great deal of work put in to quietly prepare for its arrival. Based on past experience, this planning phase is immensely important. Especially in the current economic climate, starting a business without a strong and well tested plan is not an option. This economy has made making a real movie venue very difficult.

Research for this project began back in 2005, David surveyed his Films at the Sedgwick audience, poured through hundreds of articles on film exhibition - the past and future of "the movie theater", considered non-profit vs. profit models, studied area demographics, and finally settled on Delaware County for the business. He began to work with the SBDC at Widener University to create a business plan and studied the economic feasibility of the business.

This year has been difficult, it's one thing to say "I wanna show movies. People like movies." It's an entirely different thing to say "I want to create a financially sustainable business which adds to Lansdowne's downtown, employs and pays employees, and offers an experience worth leaving your livingroom couch."

Over the last few months, the business was officially named Cinema 16:9, presentation equipment was purchased and built, making Cinema 16:9 able to publicly screen films - In fact, we've screened publicly with our friends at the Regency Cafe, and tested our presentations for private events. We've been working with consultants and architects to find the right location and right design for our venue and numerous iterations of architectural drawings have been made, and the future home of the business has been chosen. 35 N. Lansdowne Ave. Lansdowne PA - That is to say, at the Historic Lansdowne Theater, just to the left of the marquee.

Since David Titus moved to the Lansdowne area June 2007, he finished his business plan, began talking with people around Lansdowne, and began shopping around for a location for the business. When we heard that the Lansdowne Theater had been purchased by a non-profit, David reached out to them, and presented the rather unique plan for Cinema 16:9.

In March 2008 the concept for Cinema 16:9 was approved by the Theater's board and we began to work out the details of when, where and how. Since March, we've obtained our status as an LLC, finalized our architectural plan, raised start-up capital for the business, and now eight months later, at 9:30AM October 11, 2008 signed our lease with the Historic Lansdowne Theater Corporation.

This process has kept us either busy, or waiting. During our downtime, we created this highly informative website and blog, We're thrilled to report since creating this blog, we now have hundreds of loyal international spammers just clammering to read Dave's barely useful ramblings on the start-up of Cinema 16:9 LLC. But now you can visit our blog to hear about our progress, learn what Cinema 16:9 can offer you, and waste your time during lunch breaks!

Soon enough you'll see beautiful awnings up, and interior construction will begin. David will be over there often, swinging hammers and wielding a Dewalt.

We'll be the first to admit it. Our budget is tight. Very very tight. But I'm certain that our success will bring Lansdowne another fun place to go.

Perhaps you are wondering how to help? Chip in! Help us fund our construction! We want to bring the best little movie venue to Lansdowne. Anything you can contribute will help us kick it up a notch.

Can't chip in? Well, tell everyone you know about Cinema 16:9!

Until now, we've left the public appearances of Cinema 16:9 largely unexplained, and we publicly only pursued "portable theater" performances (turning a location into a theater for a night). So really, this marks a significant change for us. This is it, people, we're committed to Lansdowne! Throw back the veil of secrecy! Hooray! That's a lot to announce, and there is more, much more that we're not ready to release, but you, the few, brave international spammers will hear it first!

It's official:

Cinema 16:9 - Coming Soon: A Theater Near You.

(Stay tuned here to learn what you can expect from Cinema 16:9!)

- Cinema 16:9
General Info - info@cinema169.com

25 Sure-fire Steps to Starting Your Own Successful Small Business - EVEN WHEN THE ECONOMY IS TANKING!

Every time I've said to myself "Okay, so I've got one more day." That "one more day" turns into "one more month."

But you two can start a successful small business even when it appears there's little or no hope for national economic stability! All you need to do is follow these 25 simple steps!

1. Nurture a business idea.
2. Develop that business idea.
3. Research the viability of the business idea.
4. Turn your business idea into a business plan.
5. Talk to people. Find supporters, learn from criticisms.
6. Fix your business plan.
7. Find a location for your business.
8. Win over your potential landlord. Your presence is an asset to their asset.
9. Begin lease negotiations.
10. Wait.
11. Approach banks for small business loans.
12. Wait for banks to respond.
13. Rethink things when you are told: "This is precisely the kind of business we'd be interested in funding, however it turns out no banks are lending to new businesses right now."
14. Use your keen sense of a lack of foresight to not see this as an impending sign of the economic collapse due to set in three months later.
15. Continue lease negotiations.
16. Wait.
17. Commit nearly every penny you can spare to starting up the business.
18. Cut back on phase one plans in order to be able to afford starting up at all.
19. Find anyone and everyone you know who will commit funds to push you over the top.
20. You're going to do this. You spend a couple thousand toward some of the equipment you need to start up.
21. Talk with the contractor about how much of the build-out they can do, and how much build-out you can do yourself.
22. Continue lease negotiations. The location is really very good.
23. Wait.
24. Post on a blog to pass the anxiety producing waiting process. For the love of god! It was over a month since your last blog post. But don't worry, it turns out no one was reading your blog anyway. Website traffic suggests it's just been visits from the guys who keep spamming you.
25. Work out what you will do if the negotiations fail.
26. Receive the lease!
27. Wait as Lawyers do lawyer things.
28. Write a list twenty-five steps to start your own business.
29. Just as you think things will get moving again, your laptop hard drive will crash.
30. Remain inhumanly calm about the possibility of losing 80% of your small business work, and a lot of family photos and videos.
31. Receive a phone-call from Springboard Media to let you know that your inhumanly calm reaction has paid off. They are able to get data off the hard drive.
32. When the "smoke" clears, ask yourself "Am I about to get to the next phase of starting up?"
33. Check your list of twenty-five steps to start your own business - you're on step 33 of 25.
34. Check your e-mail. Nothing. That "you may now build your theater" e-mail has not arrived.
35. Check your voice mail. That "I tried to send a 'you may now build your theater' email, but it didn't work for some reason" voice mail message has not arrived.
36. Reassure yourself that you'll be receiving that email when you get home from work.
37. Reassure yourself that even though that email didn't arrive when you got home, it will probably arrive tomorrow before lunch.

And you're done! Well, maybe you will be tomorrow...

One Month Later

The last time I wrote, I had encouraging encouragements for entrepreneurs out there. Today, one month later...

And three days.

Yes, yes... one month and three days later, I have come to yet another installment of my letters of encouragement to entrepreneurs that say relatively nothing because there's a great deal of risk involved with talking openly about this project...

Today, let us discuss a topic I'm calling:

What To Do When Your Project is Slated to Go Public In The Middle of an Economic Sh*t Storm, and Simultaneously, You Have a New President to Vote For, Your Wife is Due...

Step 1. Identify the state of the local economy.
Step 2. Identify the state of the state economy.
Step 3. Identify the state of the national economy.
Step 4. Identify the state of the global economy.

As you work through steps 1-4 recognize your current situation in relation to the local, state, national and global economy.

Now that you've done that, take this moment to change your pants.

Now that you've changed your pants, it's time to suck it up and make the hardest decision of your life. With a more than reasonable amount of personal risk, a very tight budget to get things going, and a hell of a lot to do to become operational, you have every reason to swallow your pride, back down, and settle into your job again.

Ah, but what if you recognize that if the economy continues to tank, you yourself may be out of a job, and your skills will not be very interesting to the firms that are still afloat, because nowadays who doesn't claim to know how to do what you do? It's just computer's right?

You realize that the best way to make use of your skills is to take control, "be the ball" as it were, and strike out on your own. You're probably going to work very hard... you're probably going to work harder than you've ever worked in your life. There is a piece of you that "knows" you will feel a sense of accomplishment as you pull yourself up by the boots- your boots didn't have straps, they didn't need them they were the boots your cousin had grown out of... not that there was anything wrong with them... actually they were great; they had steal toes... and you clawed your way up from them, fixing them with black electrical tape when the leather cracked and split..

Where was I? How did I get to hand-me-down boots? What's the title of this post? "One Month Later." Wow, I'm off topic.

Okay... let me see. Let's move on, shall we?

Step 5. Recognize what you can do for the economy.

What can I do? I'm a simple videographer with a dream. Well, yes. That is what I am and what is my current impact on the economy? I leave town every morning, I work on videos and produce DVDs for a company which manufactures and sells a luxury exercise product. The product my videos help to sell, create jobs in manufacturing the product, marketing and selling the product. That effects my local economy by bringing my salary home, and by the purchases of certain items my family needs from local vendors.

Step 6. Be Local?

There will be a lot of people who are like you. They commute to their job, bring money from elsewhere and store it in town. You have to weigh whether your potential business adds to the local economy, and first of all, provides for you and your own as well or better than your current job.

Step 7. Walk Hard.

I've been sworn and slandered and ridiculed too. Had to struggle everyday my whole life through
Seen my share of the worse that this world can give. But I still got a dream and a burning rage to live. Walk hard. Hard. When they say you're all done. Walk bold. Hard. Though they say you're not the one.

Step 8. Living on the Edge

There's somethin' wrong with the world today, I don't know what it is. Something's wrong with our eyes. We're seeing things in a different way, and God knows it ain't His. It sure ain't no surprise...

Those are song lyrics.

Well, it's um... not bad advice, is it?

It's just not helpful. How about you tell us how you're going about trying to open a business in a down economy where people cannot get loans, and by your own experience, you've watched as the company you work with just cut 5 jobs and sales are down by 40%... And yet you are still taking the risk of opening up a business! What is your business plan that you think you can actually survive in this economy? And if you're business were to end up on the profitable side, you'd have to be concerned by competition, right? If you're successful, all sorts of businesses like your own will start popping up.

Hang on! Look, I don't have the answers. Geez... if I did, I probably should have been in Paulson's place. I mean I don't have an answer, but I can't help but think their "solution" sounds like Dr. Evil - "The US financial system will collapse, unless the American tax payers give me 700 billion dollars..."

But honestly, I've been working hard at this for about two and a half years now. My financial estimates for the business are extremely conservative, and I continue to remind myself that I worked so hard to build the business plan. I have a solid foundation, which I've tested out with the Small Business Development Center at Widener University in Delaware County. And while that hard work doesn't guarantee Cinema 16:9 LLC success, I know how to move forward, and that this can be a tremendous success.

But is it the right climate to be opening any business right now? I haven't looked at the stock market in the last five minutes... for all I know....

For the love of god, I'm just a guy who wants to open a movie theater in the center of Lansdowne.

Ah Ha!

Oh.

Where? Where is your movie theater going to be? I mean I'd gathered it was somewhere in Lansdowne, what with website title and all... but where is your theater going to be?

... um... well that entirely depends on the meaning of the word "is."

Come on.

Hey, did I mention my wife is due at the end of November?

Focus.

For those of you who have ever considered starting your own business, I have this to say:

Dear lord.

Is that it?

Dear lord, this is hard.

Is that all?

Well I can say a bit more... I finished college, began working for a radio station which a family friend owned. I wanted to make a movie, so I must have imagined that I'd be darting around the country, film festival to film festival... So I quit my job to shoot a film. I ran out of money and time... and failed. So in dire need of a job I ended up at Blockbuster. I didn't ask for enough, so for a year, I was being paid diddly-squat to put videos away, talk to customers, and to wear movie marketing materials such as Shrek ears and the like. I quit that job to start a production company... but I hadn't done any research, I didn't know how much it ought to cost... I grossly underbid a couple projects and dragged several of my friends with me. Half-way through our second film shoot, I realized I was thoroughly demoralized by the work we were doing, and low quality of our product which was the direct result of underbidding.

Fast forward, and I'm married, have a wonderful life in Philadelphia, I have a daughter and another one on the way. And I have a good job at a company owned by a family friend. As I see it, I am at a point, poised to make all the same mistakes again - but this time is different. So here's the thing... this is the nugget of wisdom I want to offer...

If you must start your own business, make certain that you feel an immovable gut wrenching feeling that you must risk it all to do this. Be prepared and spend the time it takes to do what you're trying to do. Impatience and your dream are enemies. I realize now that every day I walk a razor thin line of having my history repeat itself.

This time, it's tangible. Cinema 16:9 will be a success. I've done over a year of planning, and I continue to research my proposed business. My business plan is finished, but the market may change from when I finished it to when I open. I have to be willing and able to make changes to my plan. And this time, I knew to ask for help. I went to the Small Business Development Center in my area and asked for an adviser.

Now, so close to my goal I cannot lose sight of the fact that between now and then, I could still derail myself if I lose focus. As an entrepreneur, bootstrapping my way through planning, I have to remember that I cannot lose focus at my day job. Until everything is in place, that must still be my top priority.