On being everything to everyone.

The following is a short piece I wrote for a discussion group. It is targeted for folks in the escape room community, but I feel the greater message holds true for entrepreneurs of all stripes:

If I may offer some unsolicited advice on how to run your business: Don’t be afraid to find a niche. Don’t be afraid to ignore perfectly sound advice when it doesn’t “fit”.

I’ve been doing this longer than most everyone in the world. When we started, we got most of our room content from thrift stores. As we started to grow and our resources increased, we had a very clear set of obvious choices. Our rooms needed to have higher material quality, we needed to get more customers, etc.

As Puzzle Break continued to grow, we naturally fell into a niche of huge rooms, huge numbers of players, some awesome gadgetry, but also some stone-age puzzles, and a pretty hard difficulty level tempered by in-room monitors to enhance the experience.

As time passes and the industry continues to grow, our choices have grown less obvious. Where do we focus our efforts? What type of experience are we trying to curate? What audience are we trying to cater to?

Reading about some of the wonderful things some folks here have created, it has proven all-too-tempting to try and do it all. Be everything to everyone. And let me tell you, it’s a trap. Barring unlimited time and resources (and apologies for wasting your time if you’ve got unlimited time and resources): you please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

Here’s some of the areas you can focus on (not a comprehensive list by any stretch):
You can focus on newbies.
You can focus on puzzle vets.
You can focus on the folks in between.
You can focus on old people.
You can focus on young people.
You can focus on millennials.
You can focus on making extremely tech-heavy rooms.
You can focus on making familiar low-tech puzzles.
You can focus on making Hollywood-caliber set décor.
You can focus on an extremely lean budget.
You can focus on small rooms for 2-4 players.
You can focus on large rooms for 12+ players.
You can focus on medium rooms 6-8 players.
You can focus on tourists.
You can focus on locals.
You can focus on corporate clients.
You can focus on bargain-seekers.
You can focus on heavy story.
You can focus on a strictly objective-driven experience.
You can focus on shorter experiences.
You can focus on longer experiences.
You can focus on rooms designed to run for years.
You can focus on rooms designed to run for weeks.
You can focus on the physical aspect of the experience.
You can focus on the mental aspect of the experience.

What you *cannot* do is “all of the above”. Time and again I see rooms and discussions where people fall into a trap of trying to do everything at once with muddled results.

All that said, don’t *not* do something if it’s a good idea and a good fit, but: There is absolutely no shame in saying “no” to something that is a good idea for someone else, but not you.

-Nate

Nate Martin

Dubbed the "Founding Father of Escape Rooms," Nate Martin is the Co-Founder and CEO of Puzzle Break, the first American escape room company. Puzzle Break is headquartered in Seattle with locations in Long Island, Massachusetts and on Royal Caribbean ships. Prior to Puzzle Break, he was a senior executive at Microsoft and Electronic Arts. He has shipped software used by billions of users as well as some of the most beloved video games of a generation. @GuyFromTomorrow on Twitter.

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