We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Michael Rosinsky. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Michael below.

Hi Michael, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

This is an easy question to answer. Growing up I had the father that every boy would die for. His hobby was fixing cars…and when I say fixing cars, I mean taking wrecked or totaled cars and repairing them to sell. The garage at home consisted of welding tanks, paint sprayers, air compressors, and literally half cars. My Dad could repair anything with cars, and this would lead to everyone wanting to learn exactly how to do this. Everyone except me…

I wanted to be a computer programmer. And wanted nothing to do with cars. Even though my father desperately wanted to pass along this knowledge of cars and had no idea how to even turn on a computer, he bought me the Commodore 64 for Christmas instead of wrenches. My parents recognized that my path was not the same as theirs and instead of forcing me into something I didn’t want…they let me be me.

This attitude of letting me make my own way in life was obviously extremely impactful. I was allowed to make my own decisions, allowed to fail, allowed to succeed. They supported me and all of my crazy ideas. When I quit the lucrative IT world to move to LA to be an actor…they helped me look for apartments. And when I decided to invest in the escape room, they came and played. and gave feedback. Ha.

I hope I carry this same attitude over to the people who interact with me. I hope I give them the freedom to be themselves. To see what they can bring to the table and instead of discouraging creativity…embracing it. I do know that the staff at the escape room are amazing. I think they generally enjoy coming to work and playing the characters. They constantly promote the facility on their own and offer me good ideas to help grow the business. I think my parents would be proud that I am treating them the same way they would treat me.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

There is a weird round about story about how I eventually came to own, and love escape rooms. When I was growing up, I fell in love with video games. The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Resident Evil and Maniac Manion formed brought out the adventurer in me. The desire to solve puzzles and discover secrets was all I wanted to do.

Fast forward 20 years to a Facebook post from my friend John. It was a picture in what had to be a castle type setting stating that he had discovered the secrets and escaped. The post actually drove me to pick up the phone and call John. He said it was something called an escape room, and I was immediately sold. I called my friend Robbie, and after a lot of explanation and the promise of drinks after…she agreed to go. And let me tell you, we failed miserably in that room…but we both enjoyed it. This led me to discover that there were more of these in town, and I was going to play them all.

Originally, my life plan was to program video games. Now, after seeing the video games come to life….I knew I wanted to create those rooms instead. It took 7 years and a pandemic, but I finally opened Monster Quest in November or 2024.. I wanted to create a facility that immersed you right from the second you walked in to your last step out. Create the video game magic in real life.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The biggest lesson I had to unlearn was exactly what the role of an owner was in a business. Most people when they think about getting into a business believe that your main responsibility will be the main part of the business. If you own a pizza shop, it will be making pizzas. Designing ads if you own an ad company…

And i couldn’t have been more wrong. Ha. I thought owning an escape room would be designing puzzles and running clients through the rooms. I quickly found out that I don’t have time for any of that. My time has to be marketing the escape room almost 24/7. Getting up each day and exploring new and unique ways to get the name of the facility out to draw people in. You can’t spend your time on the day-to-day operations of the business. And you need to delegate and trust that your staff will keep things going.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I had a major pivot in my career about 15 years ago. I was a computer programmer with the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland. I was hired very young and found some immediate success…to where I was about to build a nice house, start a 401K… essentially just living the American Dream. However, eventually I got tired of going to the same cube on the 5th floor Monday through Friday, then going out to the same places every weekend. I fell into a repetitive pattern and even though on the outside I looked successful and happy…I wasn’t.

It was on my birthday 15 years ago that the pivot happened. I was with a co-worker, Andrew, having lunch and he noticed that I didn’t seem happy. He asked me: What’s wrong? And, for the first time, I actually said it out loud. I don’t think I want to be a computer programmer anymore. His follow up changed everything. He asked me what I wanted to do? My response was: I always thought I could be an actor. I mean, I’m way too old to start now, so not sure what I can do about it. He looked me dead in the eye and simply said: Go make one phone call about your acting. If it goes nowhere, you gave it a shot. However, if it doesn’t fall flat, go for it.

I made that one phone call and almost 2.5 years after that I moved to LA to continue the quest. While I had some limited success in acting, the most important part of that conversation with Andrew was learning to just go for it. Since that day it’s been much easier to take on new projects and career paths because I had confidence that I could make things work. You don’t necessarily need a typical 9-5 job to be successful and accepted. Forging you own path is perfectly acceptable and in all reality a lot more fun. Ha.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.monsterquestescaperoom.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/monsterquestlv/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61569032961280
• Other: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g45963-d32316685-Reviews-Monster_Quest_Escape_Rooms-Las_Vegas_Nevada.html

Image Credits

Sergio Sanchez on the two head shots.