We were lucky to catch up with Allison Chase recently and have shared our conversation below.

Allison , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

I think about this all the time. I am an Aries, so I hate being told what to do. I realized after many failed career attempts that I have to be my own boss and that I have to be in a creative field. If I wasn’t doing Madame Morbid, then I would be doing another small business. Ironically, my college degree is in screenplay writing, which doesn’t help.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have always been obsessed with ghost stories. Every single city I’ve visited, I have pre-booked a ghost tour or five. It just brings me so much joy. I love learning the history of a place with an added level of spooky. Owning a ghost tour was kind of a pipe dream. I also went around telling people I was going to one day open one up. After the 500th eye roll I received, I decided it was time to actually do it.

I made so many expensive mistakes. Everyone does. I wish I knew what I know now. Such as things I am perfectly capable of doing myself instead of outsourcing. Any new business is a constant rotation of trial and error. Costly trial and errors.

My main goal was being the best. I want my tour to be the best tour in the world. I’m constantly trying to improve it and update it. We’re starting to have return/annual customers, so it’s important to provide them with fresh material!

Good tour guides are the secret ingredient. Ours are absolutely fantastic. They will not only go over the given material, but go home and research it further themselves. They’ve invested so much into these tours and the stories they tell, and you can hear it in their voice.

The tour itself is a dark history ghost tour of Brooklyn. We have a victorian trolley that goes around Brooklyn and plays videos on a screen showing what Brooklyn looked like back in the day as well as currently.

How’d you meet your business partner?

My co-founder is actually my ex-boyfriend. We started the business 5 years after we had broken up. It was kind of by chance. He was in my neighborhood and asked if he could come over and use my bathroom real quick. While he was there, he asked what I was up to. I told him I was starting a ghost tour business and he asked me right away if he could join. I am so happy I had a business partner. I could not do this one my own.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Yelp will destroy you. You can have 100 5-star reviews, but that one 1-star will break you. It’s always a punch in the gut. It gets easier, but it always stings. The first one is always the hardest blow. I used to get so hurt and discouraged by them. Now I don’t really care. My focus is on the happy customers. It took years to get to that point though. I try to explain to my friends in other fields how crazy it is to be publicly critiqued in front of the whole world via a voting system. It’s weird. It always feels personal. You want everyone to love your product, but you honestly can’t make everyone happy. I, mean, there are some people who don’t even like ice cream! (And I’m one of them.)

Contact Info:

• Website: www.madamemorbid.com
• Instagram: @madamemorbidnyc
• Facebook: @madamemorbidnyc
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/madame-morbids-trolley-tours-brooklyn

Image Credits
Photographer: Steven Levine