Together with Advanced Orthopaedic Associates

If you or a loved one has an accident - you trip and sprain your wrist, or your daughter falls off the trampoline and fractures her arm, you know how it goes. 

Now what? Where do you go?

That's right! Skip the ER. You head to Advanced Orthopedic Associates (AOA NOW) at their new west side location - 14700 W St Teresa Suite 130.

They are here to help you with any sudden or urgent orthopedic injuries.

Their services are less expensive than a trip to the ER (and truthfully, who likes going to the ER???)

Keep AOA in mind next time someone in the family gets a bad boo-boo.

Castle in Wichita

In the Riverside area of Wichita, there is a literal castle just sitting there.

In the past, Campbell Castle (1155 N River Blvd) was a bed and breakfast known as The Castle Inn Riverside, but today it is just sitting on Zillow waiting for someone to show it some love.

Here are some details about the home:

• 17 bed, 19 bath

• 14,622 sq ft

• 1.76 Acres

• Built in 1888

• Fireplaces, hand carved fretwork, German Stained Glass, and 300 year old Grand Staircase all imported from London

• Separate Carriage house

Fun fact: it’s for sale.

(well...it was for sale when we originally wrote this a few years ago. It is not longer for sale according to Zillow, but there are no details if it was actually sold or not, so for the sake of this story, we will assume we can still buy it).

The Opportunity of a Lifetime

So I had a crazy idea over the weekend - why don’t we (yes - you, me, all of us) buy it?

Don’t let the price tag scare you, the Zestimate on Zillow is just $1,446,400 (half of the previous listing price) AND we’re going to split it.

(This is partially inspired by the MFM Podcast ​where they pitched buying Michael Jordan’s house.)

Pros of buying a castle:

1. Investment - everyone knows buying real estate is a smart, safe investment*

2. Community - we'll be building a community of like-minded individuals who appreciate the finer things in life

3. Unique Opportunity - It’s awesome. Who else can say they own a castle?

*this is not investment advice

The Math

I’m not a big fan of public math and I know I’m about to get a few responses about how this is not feasible and my math is completely wrong. That’s fine, I welcome the constructive criticism.

But please do cut me some slack, I have to make a lot of assumptions.

Option 1:

So we’re looking at just under $300k for a down payment. The goal for this is to find an Angel Investor that’s interested in putting it down.

Next step is to sell monthly memberships to the house.

If we sell 150 memberships at $100 a month, that’s $15k which is more than enough for the mortgage (+ insurance + taxes + blahblahblah) + some for maintenance and whatever else we want!

Option 2 (much better idea):

This option might be even better. If just 500 of us put in less than $3000 each, we could buy it outright. For context, there are over 35,500 people receiving this email (in that case, we could each put in less than $50…).

That’s right, if you cut Starbucks and Netflix (and maybe even your precious avocado toast) out of your budget, WE COULD OWN A CASTLE!

The best part - since we’re crowdfunding this, you can sell your share of the castle at any time rather than being stuck with a $1.5 million castle you can’t sell. Because let’s be honest, there is always a market for people interested in owning a castle.

What can we do with it?

Now you ask, why would we do this? But I say, why not?

The options are endless and this is where it gets fun. We can use the space for our own good times as well as creating a few revenue streams.

• AirBNB or Regular BNB aka Bed & Breakfast (cause no one needs all those unnecessary fees these days)

• Soho house - esque “non country club” - Soho House is a private social club in big cities around the world. If you own a share of our castle, you own a membership to use the castle. (We can iron out the details later.)

• Events - We could host so many events with this place. Parties, Murder Mysteries where you have to talk in ridiculous accents like Daniel Craig in Knives Out, Weddings, Bachelor / Bachelorette Parties, Haunted tours, Séance, ya know, the normal stuff.

• Instagram Worthy - The Museum of Ice Cream has ice cream, yes. But it is mainly a photo heavy museum where you walk through and take pictures. So let’s deck out the castle and make it even more unique so people would LOVE to share. The idea is for you to take a picture IN the museum and IN the art then share it on social media. Built in marketing baby.

We will make the Campbell Wichita Life Castle a must-see destination in Wichita where people will come from all over to visit. If we did this, it would go viral which alone helps us recoup some of our investments.

This may be a dumb idea, but some of the greatest ideas of all time were just dumb ideas, but went on to be big successes (I’m looking at you pet rock).

So what do you say sharks, who is ready to join me as a King or Queen of Riverside?

If you enjoyed this harebrained idea, let me know! Last time I had a bunch of people who were semi-interested in the idea and ready to cut a check.

Now, this is not financial or investment advice, but maybe you are having some thoughts like this...

Click here and let me know what you think (and if you’d invest in my not investment idea)! This is the longer version of the survey.