Scott Dillingham: 00:21

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: 00:33

He was the head coach of the University of Windsor volleyball team. He runs the largest volleyball league in Canada and the scare house. Welcome, Sean.

Sean Lippert: 00:42

Thanks for having me.

Scott Dillingham: 00:43

Yeah. No problem. So you've done so many things, like, more things than what most people I know have done, which is amazing.

Sean Lippert: 00:49

How did all that get started? Like, where did your entrepreneurial mindset come from?

Sean Lippert: 00:53

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 8th grade, and you have to do some type of project. And my project was as 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. And my mom went and got them, and I sold them for a buck.

Sean Lippert: 01:18

And 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. Nice.

Sean Lippert: 01:25

It's a milk guy.

Scott Dillingham: 01:26

That's so awesome. And how quickly did that sell out?

Sean Lippert: 01:28

I it was part of their host, the milk program. I wasn't making the money off the milk. Oh, true. I just became the milk guy.

Scott Dillingham: 01:34

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

Sean Lippert: 01:39

Yeah. My family is 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 wanna do that.

Scott Dillingham: 01:49

Yeah. No. That's awesome.

Sean Lippert: 01:50

It's just hard work. They come home. They're all sweaty and stinky and Yep. My brother is now doing it. And I just saw something on Facebook where my nephews was driving a forklift.

Sean Lippert: 01:58

So that's 3rd generation. Yep. It just wasn't me. I was, I was more of a risk taker.

Scott Dillingham: 02:04

No. That's awesome. So you sold chips. You sold milk. So what was your first business that where you really made some good money out?

Scott Dillingham: 02:11

What was the first thing you did?

Sean Lippert: 02:12

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 could figure it out. And then I made a call.

Sean Lippert: 02:21

So I opened up the phone book. There was a phone book back then in the yellow pages. And I opened it up and I the first one was Acme DJ service. It was

Scott Dillingham: 02:28

the top one.

Sean Lippert: 02:29

So I called him up, and his name was Al. And I said, hey. I wanna be a DJ. And he was like, alright. Come on in.

Sean Lippert: 02:35

And then that's how I started with Acme DJ Services when I was 16.

Scott Dillingham: 02:39

That's awesome. Good for you. And then but that led you into nightclubs, I'm sure.

Sean Lippert: 02:44

Yeah. I started a thing called Executive DJs.

Scott Dillingham: 02:47

Yep.

Sean Lippert: 02:47

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, they were struggling during the week. And I said, hey, let me DJ on a Monday night.

Sean Lippert: 03:00

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. And that sprung out, and I had end up having lineups, like, on a Monday night, and there would be 400 people at a party.

Sean Lippert: 03:15

And then, I just created the job myself that way.

Scott Dillingham: 03:19

No. That's awesome. And then so I'm really curious about the hot body contest. So you've got the you started with the DJ. You helped this nightclub to become popular.

Scott Dillingham: 03:28

So where did the hot body contest come in?

Sean Lippert: 03:31

I was very good at the mic. My mic skills were way better than my actual DJ skills. I could 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.

Sean Lippert: 03:46

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 they were in. And they were just a large student, travel agency.

Sean Lippert: 04:04

And they said, hey, look at this guy. And then they approached me and they said, hey, would you wanna do this down in Florida? And I was like, in my twenties, like,

Scott Dillingham: 04:12

Yeah.

Sean Lippert: 04:12

So then I went and they hired me, and I was doing that down in Florida, like, for, spring breaks.

Scott Dillingham: 04:18

That's so cool. And so you had fun? So did did they pay for your travel

Sean Lippert: 04:21

to do that? Oh, yeah. I was there for weeks at a time. So you go in there for 1 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've That's awesome.

Sean Lippert: 04:32

It was just entertainment and they don't remember, like, they use this thing MuchMusic used to have this thing called Sand Job. Yeah. And they hired me, and I was the guy that would hype the crowd up before they would go live with Rick Latemp or whatever that was.

Scott Dillingham: 04:45

That's so awesome. I so I remember you're older than me, Bradon 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 that was because of you.

Sean Lippert: 04:58

I didn't invent it, obviously, but I just became good at it.

Scott Dillingham: 05:02

Promoting it and starting it.

Sean Lippert: 05:03

Yeah. And pushing it and then a lot of I I basically had to create a lot of my own work. I had to hustle it. So if I wanted to have more work, I had to present it to a club owner and say, hey, I can do this for you. Or I introduced, like, basically flyers.

Sean Lippert: 05:16

Yep. Back in the nineties, I would say, hey. And 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 if they were doing it in Vegas when we were in Vegas, like, why can't we do that here?

Scott Dillingham: 05:27

Yeah.

Sean Lippert: 05:27

So then we take 8 kids and put them out in the street, and they would say, hey, come out and check out Pepper's Bar and Grill or Dante's Dance Bar. Yep. And they would give them a flyer, and that would be, like, the way to get them to come in.

Scott Dillingham: 05:37

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.

Scott Dillingham: 05:45

But I guess you hosted a surprise wedding for your wife, and you were all over the news, all over TV.

Sean Lippert: 05:52

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.

Sean Lippert: 06:05

No problem. Let's elope. So we planned on eloping, but there was no way that my family was gonna allow me to get for the eloping. So I basically just took every suggestion. I would ask her a question.

Sean Lippert: 06:17

What would you like at this? And what would you like there? Who would be there? What would be the food? What kind of decorations would you want?

Sean Lippert: 06:23

What would be the colors? Everything. And I just put it in a book, and I planned it for an entire year. And then on the day that was August 13th, 10 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 24 hours, had a 100000 views.

Sean Lippert: 06:45

And it took off, and we were getting calls from NBC and CNN, CBS. And then we actually Rachael Ray called us, and we end up going to LA to do the Ricky Lake Show.

Scott Dillingham: 06:55

Okay. Yeah. I remember that show. That's awesome. Yeah.

Scott Dillingham: 06:58

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?

Sean Lippert: 07:07

Yeah. There was a couple. There were some people that weren't cool about it. I don't know if this is the right thing to do, but I just told them where my heart went and I knew what my wife loved and I. She's not lazy.

Sean Lippert: 07:15

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: 07:21

For sure.

Sean Lippert: 07:22

She's running businesses herself. I took that burden off of her and

Scott Dillingham: 07:25

That's awesome.

Sean Lippert: 07:26

That. And now it's a great story. It's still it's on YouTube. It's got millions of views, and then we've got a great life with it.

Scott Dillingham: 07:32

Yeah. No. For sure. And I get so before the show started, we quickly looked it up. And if you Google Sean Lippert surprise wedding, you'll find it.

Scott Dillingham: 07:40

And there's all kinds of stuff there. It's really cool.

Sean Lippert: 07:42

My claim to fame though is Sports Illustrated did a story on it. So That's

Scott Dillingham: 07:46

so cool.

Sean Lippert: 07:46

I'm a volleyball coach.

Scott Dillingham: 07:47

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 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.

Scott Dillingham: 08:03

And, they're doing something really cool with eating inside of the scare house.

Sean Lippert: 08:07

Yeah. So touching that. An immersive dinner experience.

Scott Dillingham: 08:09

That's right. So Sean is going to talk about how he became the head coach of the University Windsor volleyball team, and he's gonna touch on his league as well, and then get to the scare house of what's going on there. So then I think

Sean Lippert: 08:24

In between during the break, we're talking about other things, and there's so many 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.

Sean Lippert: 08:35

Yep. And then they canned me. I guess you gotta win a lot to keep your And then, yeah, then it worked into now we run the volleyball league, but, also, I worked here at AM 800 at 89x, the river. Also, I called bingo, And I that just popped in my head. I forgot I did that for 10 years.

Sean Lippert: 08:53

I was a bingo caller when we're talking about it. There's just so many things

Scott Dillingham: 08:56

Since you've done. Yeah.

Sean Lippert: 08:58

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.

Sean Lippert: 09:08

It just it happened. It started off as a pop boy. I was in the 8th grade. My I said to my dad, I want a job. He's alright.

Sean Lippert: 09:14

Go get one. My mom typed me over a type of resin. Like, not on a computer, like, on a typewriter.

Scott Dillingham: 09:18

That's odd.

Sean Lippert: 09:19

And I handed them all out, and then I was a pop boy at, Windsor Bingo Palace. Did that for 10 years.

Scott Dillingham: 09:26

Yeah.

Sean Lippert: 09:26

But, yeah. Is there somebody out there and you're just not sure what you wanna 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 50 years from now.

Scott Dillingham: 09:38

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.

Sean Lippert: 09:49

What's so bad that can happen that you failed? If you're not failing, you're not learning. And if you're not learning, you're not getting better. And how else you supposed to be an entrepreneur if you don't fail? It's just it's part of that process.

Sean Lippert: 10:01

No one hits 1 out of the park. And if you do hit out of the park, that's awesome. But that's only one at bat. Yep. There's so many more that are coming.

Sean Lippert: 10:09

So if I'm a big believer that people do go into paralysis by analysis. Yep. And I'm from the old way of thinking is just, you know, grab it, feel it, touch it, and go with it.

Scott Dillingham: 10:21

Yep. I forget what book, but I read a new 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 want to be embarrassed in front of their classmates. So they're actually saying they think from the school system that a lot of people now today are scared to take risks because they don't wanna be wrong.

Sean Lippert: 10:43

Yeah. You're right. There's always but I my family was been instrumental for when you screw up in my family, it it comes down hard. Not Yep. But it's more of a razz.

Sean Lippert: 10:55

Like, you idiot. You know what you did. It could be you come in, you could trip and they go, you tripped. And all they pointed out right away. And I think that's really important because it does thicken your skin.

Sean Lippert: 11:05

Yep. And so that when you actually go you're not afraid to trip. You're not afraid and then you can use that as an analogy in life. You're gonna trip. You're gonna make some mistakes.

Sean Lippert: 11:15

And I love my family for it like where they would just like, bust my balls about it. Hey. You that's part of life.

Scott Dillingham: 11:21

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.

Sean Lippert: 11:28

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.

Sean Lippert: 11:33

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 gotta massage it. You gotta turn it.

Sean Lippert: 11:42

You gotta tinker with it going into scare house. There was always pivoting. We've been 13 years now. And when we first started, it was a goof. It was we had Woody's Outhouse as a nightclub.

Sean Lippert: 11:53

My partner and I had it, and we were going to lose Bentley's Roadhouse because at that time in 2,006, the Americans had the passport issues. This is they're changing how they were doing the border, and a lot of the Americans weren't gonna come over, and it was an American bar.

Scott Dillingham: 12:07

Yep.

Sean Lippert: 12:07

Because the drinking age is 19 here, and it's 21 over there. So we knew we were gonna lose it. And then I said to Dario, I was like, hey. Remember when we're talking about doing the haunted house and stuff? If we're gonna lose it, who cares?

Sean Lippert: 12:20

Let's just let's do it. Yeah. So we did. And we sucked. It was terrible.

Sean Lippert: 12:26

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.

Sean Lippert: 12:43

Yeah. 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 in the haunted houses.

Sean Lippert: 12:55

Nobody goes, hey, man. One day I'm gonna have an amazing haunted house. It just happens. And you take that risk. We did.

Sean Lippert: 13:01

And then the next year, we tweaked it a little bit more. And then next year, we tweaked it again. And we just kept tweaking and tweaking. And now we're 13 years later.

Scott Dillingham: 13:09

Yep.

Sean Lippert: 13:09

And every time you get a roadblock, you figure it out. We wanted a new place and we wanted a permanent haunt, but meant find 1. So we found a landlord that took a risk on us. And he was awesome. He was a he's a great guy.

Scott Dillingham: 13:21

Okay. He's

Sean Lippert: 13:22

like, Sean, if you can make sure if you can get the zoning, I don't care. I don't care. Just get the zoning. I was like, okay. Yeah.

Sean Lippert: 13:30

I called 311. And I dealt with and I was like, hey. I wanna open behind a house. I could just imagine what that guy was like. Alright.

Sean Lippert: 13:36

I'll put you in the building. And the city of Windsor was awesome. They not one time did they put up a roadblock for us.

Scott Dillingham: 13:42

That's awesome.

Sean Lippert: 13:43

And then we get we set it up and we got the zoning on city council approved it. 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: 13:54

It's awesome. That's incredible. Yeah. Great. Good for you.

Scott Dillingham: 13:58

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 How did you become a head coach?

Sean Lippert: 14:04

Oh, that was just by chance. Okay. I was coaching volleyball all the way through. And Nice. Yeah.

Sean Lippert: 14:08

And then I went in. I brought in some athletes. And at the time, coach, Hub said, hey. You wanna be my assistant coach? And I was like, sure.

Sean Lippert: 14:16

Why not? And we did. That's awesome. We revamped it, got the program going, and then Hub retired. He was 20 years in.

Sean Lippert: 14:22

I went in for 2 years, and I got canned. And the assistant coach came in, and he's been there ever since. And they went from 0 to hero. They're doing really good now.

Scott Dillingham: 14:31

But and so are you because you also run the largest volleyball league in Canada. Yeah.

Sean Lippert: 14:35

Yeah. That was by chance too is because once you get into that circle, Blaise Gilles, there's a bunch of teachers that ran WAMBL. It's the Windsor All Mix Volleyball League. And it started in 76. So we're going into what's that?

Sean Lippert: 14:47

45 years, 46 years. He wanted to retire. And I reached out and I said, I'd be interested in doing this. And he's like, we'd be interested in you running it. And they just handed it over.

Sean Lippert: 14:56

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: 15:06

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

Sean Lippert: 15:11

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.

Sean Lippert: 15:18

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: 15:24

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.

Sean Lippert: 15:35

We always do renovations We always wanna tinker with about 20% of your haunt. So every 5 years is brand new.

Scott Dillingham: 15:42

Yep.

Sean Lippert: 15:42

But last year, we had a friend of us come ours come and say, hey, I want you to serve dinner to us inside the hunt. And we're like, shit. 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.

Sean Lippert: 15:53

And we're like, okay, our buddy. And we're like, okay, Eddie. We'll do it.

Scott Dillingham: 15:56

Yep.

Sean Lippert: 15:56

So we did it. Set it up. It was awesome. He's like, I told you. And it was very successful.

Sean Lippert: 16:01

And we said, okay. Let's offer it more to the public now. K.

Scott Dillingham: 16:03

So we offered

Sean Lippert: 16:03

it to the public. And then lo and behold, we served dinner 30 times inside the hunt. That's incredible. And it was so successful that, you know what, we're gonna do it again. And we times it by 4.

Sean Lippert: 16:17

So this year, there's 4 different themes of telling a story, and we're calling it a immersive dinner experience.

Scott Dillingham: 16:25

That's so cool.

Sean Lippert: 16:26

And it is. It's like it's a brand new industry. No one's doing it.

Scott Dillingham: 16:29

No. I love it. So say I wanna go. I wanna bring my wife. How can I get an immersive dinner experience?

Sean Lippert: 16:34

You go to scarehousewindsor.com. Okay. And you go in there, and you'll see immersive dinner experience.

Scott Dillingham: 16:39

Okay.

Sean Lippert: 16:40

Click the theme that you want. There's cabin in the woods. There's the the mad hatters. There's there's the cursed dinner. Yeah.

Sean Lippert: 16:46

Click the one you want. Pick the time. Next thing, we're gonna be messing you up while you have an amazing meal.

Scott Dillingham: 16:51

That's so cool. And then do you have a a minimum amount of people per dinner?

Sean Lippert: 16:56

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 it's 10 people. In Cabin in the Woods, it's 4 tables of 4, so there could be 4 people in there.

Scott Dillingham: 17:09

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: 17:16

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.

Sean Lippert: 17:27

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 5, 6 years.

Sean Lippert: 17:36

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: 17:44

Okay. So then for anybody who wants to go to the scare house, buy your tickets now. How do you buy them?

Sean Lippert: 17:49

You just go to our website. Okay. 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.

Sean Lippert: 18:01

There's 3 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. And then there's the zombie maze, which is an add on to that.

Sean Lippert: 18:11

Nice. Yeah.

Scott Dillingham: 18:11

So That's so cool.

Sean Lippert: 18:12

I'm gonna say kill a couple hours of Halloween fun with the family, and it's a Yeah. It's for everybody.

Scott Dillingham: 18:17

Yeah. No. I love it. So that's awesome. So scarehousewindsor.com Okay. Perfect. Thanks so much for your time, Sean. It was great having you on today.

Scott Dillingham: 18:25

It was fun. Alright. Take