Alright. Thanks for tuning in today. Today, I have a really special guest with us. His name is Sean Lippert. He's run everything from surprise weddings, nightclubs, hot body contests, nail salons.
Scott Dillingham:He was the head coach of the University of Windsor volleyball team. He runs the largest volleyball league in Canada and the Scarehouse. Welcome, Sean.
Shawn Lippert:Thanks for having
Scott Dillingham:me. Yeah. No problem. So you've done so many things, like more things than what most people I know have done, which is amazing. How did all that get started?
Scott Dillingham:Like, did your entrepreneurial mindset come from?
Shawn Lippert:I really can't put my finger on it, but I do remember a story like where I my earliest memory of being like, hey, there's a way of making money here. And that was, like, in the eighth grade, and you have to do some type of project. And my project was is I was gonna sell potato chips at lunch. And so I got permission from the school to do it. And part of the project was to actually sell potato chips.
Shawn Lippert:And my mom went and got them, and I sold them for the buck. I sold out. And I was like, that was crazy. And then so they actually allowed me to do it some more. And next thing is the milk guy.
Shawn Lippert:Nice. That's a milk guy.
Scott Dillingham:That's awesome. And how quickly did that sell out?
Shawn Lippert:I it was part of their whole the milk program. I I wasn't making money off the milk, but I just became the milk guy.
Scott Dillingham:No. That's awesome. And I think you told me too, like, your family, they were all blue collar. Like, they weren't into the
Shawn Lippert:Yeah. My family's all insulators. They're mechanical insulators. So I really don't know where it came from, but just I, if anything, I just knew that I didn't want to do that.
Scott Dillingham:No, that's awesome.
Shawn Lippert:It's just hard work. They come home, they're all sweaty and stinky and my brother's now doing it. I just saw something on Facebook where my nephew was driving a forklift. So that's third generation. Yep.
Shawn Lippert:It just wasn't me. Was I was more of a risk taker.
Scott Dillingham:No, that's awesome. So you sold chips, sold milk. So what was your first business that where you really made some good money out? What was the first thing you did?
Shawn Lippert:Got into DJing and I went home one day and I was like, pop, I wanna DJ. And he was like, do you know how? And I was like, I don't know. I can figure it out. And then I made a call.
Shawn Lippert:So I opened up the phone book. There was a phone book back then, the yellow pages. And I opened it up and I the first one was Acme DJ service. Was the top one. So I called him up and his name was Al.
Shawn Lippert:And I said, hey. I wanna be a DJ. And he was like, alright. Come on in. Then that's how I started with Acme DJ services when I was 16.
Scott Dillingham:That's awesome. Good for you. And then but that led you into night clubs, I'm sure.
Shawn Lippert:Yeah. I started a thing called executive DJs.
Scott Dillingham:Yep.
Shawn Lippert:And I hired all my friends and we were DJing. We DJed at Wheels Roller Skating Rink and we did nightclubs and there was a bar called Last Harry's. And Last Harry's, were struggling during the week and I said, Hey, let me DJ on a Monday night. And they said, Sure, no problem. So on Monday night, I said, Let's do some drink special and I started calling all my friends and then I would DJ for them.
Shawn Lippert:And that sprung out and I had end up having lineups, like, a Monday night, and there would be 400 people at a party. And then I just created the job myself that way.
Scott Dillingham:No. That's awesome. And then so I'm really curious about the hot body contest. So you've got the you started with a DJ. You helped this nightclub to become popular.
Scott Dillingham:So where did the hot body contest come in?
Shawn Lippert:I was very good at the mic. My mic skills were way better than my actual DJ skills. I could play music, no problem, but I wasn't really good at it. Yeah. But I was good at being quick witted and I could talk very well on a microphone in front of a lot of people.
Shawn Lippert:And I wasn't afraid to embarrass myself. So I just did, I just tried to create entertainment and that turned into a hot body contest and one day I was working at a place called Peppers and there were some people that came in from breakaway tours. Were in and they were just a large student travel agency and they said hey look at this guy and then they approached me and they say hey would you want to do this down in Florida? And was like in my twenty's like yeah. So, then I went and they hired me and I was doing that down in Florida like for spring breaks.
Scott Dillingham:That's so cool. And so, you had fun. So, they did they pay for your travel to do that?
Shawn Lippert:Oh, yeah. I was there for weeks at a time. You go in there for one week, You get Sundays off. The rollover would come back in, and then they would just pair you up with another DJ. And so I That's awesome.
Shawn Lippert:It was just entertainment.
Scott Dillingham:Yeah.
Shawn Lippert:Fun. Remember, like, they use this thing much music used to have this thing called sand job, and they hired me. And I was the guy that would hype the crowd up before they would go live with Rick the temp or whatever that was.
Scott Dillingham:That's so awesome. I reme so I remember you're older than me, Raydon 37. But I remember when I was in the clubs going to it. I remember there was no hot body contest and then they came out of nowhere here in Windsor. So now, it's because of you.
Shawn Lippert:I didn't invent it, obviously, but I just became good at it.
Scott Dillingham:Promoting it and starting it.
Shawn Lippert:Yeah. And pushing it and then a lot of I basically had to create a lot of my own work. I had to hustle it. So, I wanted to have more work, had to present it to a club owner and say, Hey, I can do this for you. Or I introduced like basically flyers.
Shawn Lippert:Yep. Back in the ninety's, I would say, Hey, we hired a bunch of kids, and they would go down the street. And the reason why they weren't doing that at the time, but they were doing it in Vegas, when we were in Vegas, why can't we do that here? So then we'd take eight kids and put them out in the street, and they would say, Hey, come out and check out Peppers Bar and Grill, or Dante's Dance Bar. And they would give them a flyer and that would be like the way to get them to come in.
Scott Dillingham:That's awesome. No. I love it. That's so cool. And before the show actually just talking about cool because I don't think anybody's ever gone to this extent, but I guess you hosted a surprise wedding for your wife and you were all over the news, over TV.
Shawn Lippert:Yeah. That's basically what it was. My wife didn't want to have the pressure of having a wedding. She was just getting pushed around from all different ways of like way that she should do it. And she just, she got upset one day and so I was like, okay, no problem.
Shawn Lippert:Let's elope. So, we planned on eloping but there was no way that my family's going allow me to get married for the eloping. So, I basically just took every suggestion. I would ask for a question. What would you like at this?
Shawn Lippert:And what would you like there? Who would be there? What would be the food? What kind of decorations would you want? What would be the colors?
Shawn Lippert:Everything. And I just put it in a book and I planned it for an entire year. Then on the day that was August 13, ten years ago now, we had a full blown wedding. And my buddy Gavin, who's a full fledged movie director now, but he filmed it, edited it all down, threw it up on to YouTube, and within twenty four hours, had a 100,000 views, and it took off and we're getting calls from NBC and CNN CBS. And then we actually Rachel Ray called us and we end up going to LA to do the Ricky Lake show.
Scott Dillingham:Okay. Yeah. I remember that. That's awesome. Yeah.
Scott Dillingham:So was there when you were planning that, because that takes a lot of hard work and time, was there any close calls? Did your wife almost find out or did anybody almost tell her and you had to stop?
Shawn Lippert:Yeah. There was a couple. There were some people that weren't cool about it. I don't if this is the right thing to do, but I had told them where my heart went and I knew what my wife loved and I she's not lazy, but I say, yeah, sometimes she's lazy and she just she would rather not plan something this big if she didn't have to.
Scott Dillingham:For sure.
Shawn Lippert:She's running businesses herself. I took that burden off of her and That's awesome. That. And now it's a great story. It's still it's on YouTube.
Shawn Lippert:It's got millions of views, and then we've got a great life with it.
Scott Dillingham:Yeah. No. For sure. And I did so before the show started, we quickly looked it up. And if you Google Sean Lipper surprise wedding, you'll find it.
Scott Dillingham:And there's all kinds of stuff there. It's really cool.
Shawn Lippert:My claim to fame though is Sports Illustrated did a story on it.
Scott Dillingham:So that's
Shawn Lippert:That's so I'm a volleyball coach.
Scott Dillingham:Yeah. That's so cool. So we have to take a quick break, but when we come back, we'll touch a bit on the volleyball, but we're also gonna touch about the scare house. So Sean runs the Windsor Scare House and he's gonna dive into sort of what's involved with that. And they're doing something really cool with eating inside of the scare house.
Shawn Lippert:So we'll touch on that. An immersive dinner experience.
Scott Dillingham:That's right. So Sean is going to talk about how he became the head coach of the University Windsor volleyball team. Think And he's gonna touch on his league as well and then get to the scare house and what's going on there. So then thanks.
Shawn Lippert:In between during the break, we're talking about other things and there's so many things. I I forgot. Even being, like, the volleyball coach, that happened. Yep. I was the men's volleyball coach, I was assistant coach, became the head coach.
Shawn Lippert:Yep. And then the can me. I guess you gotta win a lot to keep your Mhmm. And then, yeah, then it worked into now we run the volleyball league, but also, I worked here at AM eight hundred at eighty nine X, The River, also I called Bingo. And I that just popped in my head.
Shawn Lippert:Forgot I did that for ten years. I was a bingo caller when we were talking about it. There's just so many things
Scott Dillingham:That you've done. Yeah.
Shawn Lippert:I just if you just feel as though that's where you should go next, go. Yep. And there's no rhyme or reason. Like, I didn't I don't wake up and go, oh, yeah. I'm gonna be a bingo caller.
Shawn Lippert:I just it happened. I started off as a pop way. I was in the eighth grade. My I said to my dad, you know, I want a job. He's alright.
Shawn Lippert:Go get one. My mom typed me a type of resume. Not on a computer, like on a typewriter. That's odd. And I handed them all out, and then I was a pop boy at Windsor Bingo Palace.
Shawn Lippert:Did that for ten years. So yeah. If there's somebody out there and you're just not sure what you want to do, just do something because it's never gonna be what you do, but it puts you one step forward to wherever you end up fifty years from now.
Scott Dillingham:That's right. And the other thing you said too, actually, which we should touch on now because you are, but you also said, just take that risk. That's what you would advise someone. Just take the risk.
Shawn Lippert:What's so bad that can happen that you fail? If you're not failing, you're not learning. And if you're not learning, you're not getting better. And how else are you supposed to be an entrepreneur if you don't fail? It's it's part of that process.
Shawn Lippert:No one hits one out of the park. And if you do hit it out of the park, that's awesome. But that's only one at bat. There's so many more that are coming. So, if, I'm a big believer that people do go into paralysis by analysis.
Shawn Lippert:And I'm from the old way of thinking is just no, grab it, feel it, touch it and go with it.
Scott Dillingham:Yep. I forget what book, but I read in a book and it said that people nowadays, they are too scared to make risks and they think it stems back to grade school. Because in grade school, no matter what you did, if you had a wrong answer, the teachers know what's wrong and they didn't wanna be embarrassed in front of their class So they're actually saying they think from the school system that a lot of people now today are scared to take risks. They don't want to be wrong.
Shawn Lippert:Yeah, you're right. There's always but I my family has been instrumental for when you screw up in my family, it comes down hard. Not Yep. But it's more of a razz. Like, you idiot, you knew what you did.
Shawn Lippert:It could be you could come in, you could trip and they go, you tripped. You they point it out right away. And I think that's really important because it does thicken your skin. Yep. And so that when you actually go out, you're not afraid to trip.
Shawn Lippert:Yep. You're not afraid, and then you can use that as an analogy in life. You're going to trip. You're going to make some mistakes. And I love my family for it, like where they would just like bust my balls about it.
Shawn Lippert:Hey, That's part of life.
Scott Dillingham:Yep. I agree. You don't know if it's not gonna work unless you try it. And if it tries it, you just learn how not to do it.
Shawn Lippert:Yeah. You're never gonna make the same mistake twice. And if you do, you're an idiot. You're gonna fail. There are dummies out there.
Shawn Lippert:Let's call it what it is. There's people that just fail because they keep doing the same thing over and over again. Yep. But you got to massage it. You got to turn it.
Shawn Lippert:You got to tinker with it going into scare house. There's always pivoting. We've been 13 now. And when we first started, it was a goof. It was we had Woody's Oath House as a nightclub.
Shawn Lippert:My partner and I had it and we were going to lose Bentley's Roadhouse because at that time in 2006, the Americans had the passport issues. This is they were changing how they were doing the border and a lot of the Americans weren't going to come over and it was an American bar. Yep. Because the drinking age is 19 here and it's 21 over there. So we knew we were going to lose it.
Shawn Lippert:And then I said to Dario, I was like, Hey, remember when we were talking about doing the haunted house and stuff? If we're gonna lose it, who cares? Let's just, let's do it. So we did. And we sucked.
Shawn Lippert:It was terrible. Looking back now, I'm embarrassed to think about some of the things that we did and we lost our shirts in there. We didn't make any money at all, but it was so much fun in that process. And I think that's as an entrepreneur, you need to fall in love with the process. Yeah.
Shawn Lippert:And that's why it doesn't matter what I do. Bingo caller to pumping gas to restaurants to DJing to volleyball, like it doesn't matter. Now you're into haunted houses. Nobody goes, hey, man. One day, I'm going have an amazing haunted house.
Shawn Lippert:It just happens. And you take that risk. We did, and then the next year we tweaked it a little bit more. Then next year we tweaked it again. We just kept tweaking and tweaking.
Shawn Lippert:And now, we're thirteen years later, and every time you get a roadblock, you figure it out. We wanted a new place and we wanted a permanent haunt, but we can't find one. So we found a landlord that took a risk on us, and he was awesome. Was a he's a Greek guy. Okay.
Shawn Lippert:Said, Sean, if you can make if you can get the zoning, I don't care. I don't care. Just get the zoning. I was like, okay. I called 311 and I dealt with and I was like, hey, I want to open behind a house.
Shawn Lippert:I could just imagine what that guy was like, alright, I'll put you in a building. And the city of Windsor was awesome. Not one time did they put up a roadblock for us. That's awesome. And then we get, we set it up and we got the zoning and city council approved it.
Shawn Lippert:And then they even allowed us to write the bylaw. So we wrote the bylaw for a haunted house definition in the city of Windsor.
Scott Dillingham:It's awesome. Incredible. Yeah.
Shawn Lippert:That's great.
Scott Dillingham:Good for you. So before we get into the scare house, because I know we're talking about it, just a head coach. So how did you how did that happen? How did you become a head coach?
Shawn Lippert:Oh, was just by chance. Okay. I was coaching volleyball all the way through. And Nice. Yeah.
Shawn Lippert:And then I went in. I brought in some athletes. And at the time, was a coach. Hube said, hey. You wanna be my assistant coach?
Shawn Lippert:And I
Scott Dillingham:was like, k.
Shawn Lippert:Sure. Why not? And we did. That's awesome. We revamped it, got the program going, and then Hube retired.
Shawn Lippert:He was twenty years in. I went in for two years, and I got canned. And the assistant coach came in, and he's been there ever since. And they went from zero to hero. They're doing really good now.
Scott Dillingham:But and so are you because you also run the largest volleyball league in Canada. Yeah.
Shawn Lippert:Yeah. That was by chance too is because once you get into that circle, Blaise Gilles, there's a bunch of teachers that ran Wamble. It's the Windsor Olympics volleyball league. And it started in '76. So we're going into, what was that, forty five years, forty six years?
Shawn Lippert:He wanted to retire and I reached out and I said, I'd be interested in doing this. And he said, We'd be interested in you running it. And they just handed it over. That's They went, Here you go. Promise us that you'll continue with our philosophies and grow the league the way that we wanted to grow, and that's what we've been doing ever since.
Scott Dillingham:That's awesome. No. That's so cool. Even my neighbor, he's, man, I just wanna get back out there and get it going. So
Shawn Lippert:I get messages all the time at this time, especially now like, what's happening? I don't know. I don't know what's happening. We'll see. The school board's gotta get back to us.
Shawn Lippert:As soon as the government can say when school's gonna be back to where it should be, then they'll open up the gyms for us.
Scott Dillingham:Yep. So hopefully soon. But, yeah. So no. I wanna touch on the scare house and let you talk about that because you're doing some really cool thing with the restaurant, but you also, you're actually doing renovations to make it even scarier.
Shawn Lippert:We always do renovations every year. We always want to tinker with about 20% of your haunt. So every five years is brand new. Yep. But last year we had a friend of ours come and say, hey, I want you to serve dinner to us inside the hunt.
Shawn Lippert:And we're like, you're there's no way we're gonna do that. Yeah. Because if you're gonna do it, I'm gonna give you a chef. And we're like, okay, our buddy. And we're like, okay, Eddie, we'll do it.
Shawn Lippert:Yep. So we did it. Set it up. It was awesome. He's like, told you.
Shawn Lippert:And it was very successful. And we said, okay, let's offer it more to the public now. So we offered it to the public, and then lo and behold, we served dinner 30 times inside the hut. That's incredible. And it was so successful that you know what?
Shawn Lippert:We're gonna do it again. We times it by four. So this year, there's four different themes of telling a story and we're calling it an immersive dinner experience.
Scott Dillingham:That's so cool.
Shawn Lippert:And it is. It's like it's a brand new industry. No one's doing it.
Scott Dillingham:No. I love it. So say I wanna go. I wanna bring my wife. How can I get an immersive dinner experience?
Shawn Lippert:You go to scarehousewindsor.com. Okay. And you go in there and you'll see immersive dinner experience.
Scott Dillingham:Okay.
Shawn Lippert:Click theme that you want. There's Cabin in the Woods. There's the Mad Hatters. There's the cursed Yeah. The one you want.
Shawn Lippert:Pick the time. Next thing we're gonna be messing you out while you have an amazing meal.
Scott Dillingham:That's so cool. And then do you have a minimum amount of people per dinner?
Shawn Lippert:Every room's different. I'm not sure exactly what those are, but those stipulations will be in the where you click to get in there. But the cursed dinner I know is 10 people. In Cabin in the Woods, it's four tables of four, so there could be four people in there.
Scott Dillingham:Okay. Yeah. No. That's awesome. And then for the scare house, because that's you've done some heavy renovations again this year.
Scott Dillingham:It's gonna be scarier than ever. How do people sign up? Because I know with COVID, like I just got back from Niagara Falls, and you have to prebook your events because everything's selling out, and we don't want that to happen.
Shawn Lippert:No. In order we always say that you need to book ahead no matter what. And we've been doing that. It's called time ticketing. We've been doing time ticketing, like, for the last five, six years.
Shawn Lippert:Okay. And you can go on there and pick the time that you wanna come in, and then you'll get in at the with the littlest amount of wait as possible.
Scott Dillingham:Okay. So then for anybody who wants to go to the Scarehouse, buy your tickets now. How do you buy them?
Shawn Lippert:You just go to our website. Okay. It's www.scarehousewindsor.com. Okay. And then you can buy your tickets for the immersive dinner experience, or you could package it together to get the most bang for your buck.
Shawn Lippert:Okay. There's three different haunts within the haunted house. There's Scared Evil. That's the main haunt. And there's haunted darkness, which is an add on.
Shawn Lippert:And then there's the zombie maze, which is an add on to that. Nice. Yeah.
Scott Dillingham:So That's so cool. I'm excited.
Shawn Lippert:Kill a couple hours of Halloween fun with the family and it's Yeah. It's for everybody.
Scott Dillingham:Yeah. No. I love it. So that's awesome. So scarehousewindsordotcom.dotcom.
Scott Dillingham:Okay. Perfect. Thanks so much for your time, Sean.
Shawn Lippert:It was great having you on today. It was fun. Alright. Take