Failure Friday: “We made a ton of investment … then we decided to close.”
In this week’s Failure Friday segment, we hear from Nate Martin, the founder of America’s original escape room. His business Puzzle Break now has locations worldwide, but an early expansion to San Francisco was a puzzle he couldn’t crack.
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What It's About
It was all going great ... until it wasn't.
Notes from Chris
Episode 1693
I believe we can learn as much from failure as we can from success, if not more. It’s with this principle in mind that we’re starting Failure Friday, a collection of short stories all about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure. Just like our Throwback Thursday segment, you’ll hear directly from side hustlers who have struggled to get something off the ground. They’ll tell you a short story of something that went very wrong. The stories will vary, but often it starts with an idea, what they thought would happen and what really happened—and of course, what they learned. I applaud their courage! I’ll share some of my failure stories along the way as well. Today’s short story features Nate Martin, the founder of Puzzle Break. We told the successful story of his escape room empire on Episode #927: Video Game Maker Creates Real-Life Puzzle Rooms. But as you’ll hear, while he was fortunate to have a great success with his first location, he then thought, “The sky is the limit!” … and that’s not at all what happened with location #2. There’s at least one important lesson here. Listen to today's episode to learn more...MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- I’m really grateful to Nate for helping us with this segment. Check out his website at PuzzleBreak.com or or check out one of their many locations… just not in San Francisco!
- The Great Escape! Video Game Maker Creates Real-Life Puzzle Rooms: An employee for a video game company turns a childhood love for adventure into a real-life escape room business.
- Nestle Employee Doubles Salary By Playing Video Games at Night: Hard work pays off! After three years of streaming video games to an audience of thousands every night, this marketing manager now earns more from his side gig than he does from his day job.
- College Student Pays Off Loans by Flipping Classic Video Games: Wanting to get out of debt, a college student pays off a $4,000 student loan by buying and reselling classic video games.
