We were lucky to catch up with Peter Carollo recently and have shared our conversation below.

Peter, appreciate you joining us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

You know this is one of those questions that I think every business owner goes through and thinks at least once a day. I think in this industry and really any smaller independent business owner has days where the amount of problems start to outweigh the benefits of making your own schedule and being your own boss. Likely in the same way that others that work standard 9 to 5 jobs just wish they could be their own boss and life would be so much better. I largely think it’s the old saying “the grass is always greener on the other side”, playing out in real life. I know I have certainly had those days and in the past year I’ve really made an effort to focus on building up my team and empowering those around me to help take some of that load off which has paid off in dividends. I never had a typical 9 to 5 job as most would describe it but I did service jobs in college, working as a waiter at local restaurants around my university and I couldn’t stand it. Digging deeper I think the real thing that I couldn’t stand was working that hard, and only walking away with money. And sure I gained some people skills and social skills and I learn to work as a team and all of those can be extremely valuable in their own right but I believe to be a successful business owner and not get burnt out, you have to see the big picture and know that you aren’t working towards a paycheck you are building something; and what you wanna do with that something is up to you.

Peter, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

So currently I own and operate three businesses in San Antonio, Texas all in the entertainment industry. My first company started in 2016, which is All Texas Entertainment. The genesis for all Texas entertainment started from family vacations. Our family would travel and go play escape rooms and we paid $300 for people to go in a room for an hour, and when we won, we didn’t win anything and we were still happy and would be talking about this positive experience for days and all of these factors screamed potential successful business. The downside is that nobody in our family had any experience running a retail business or really any business for that matter. I was fresh out of college and looking to create some thing and grow it from scratch. To solve the whole lack of experience problem we thought we were taking a shortcut by starting a Mobile Escape Room where we would take the traditional one hour escape room experience, build it into a trailer, and this way we never had to learn about retail or rent or leasing agreements. It’s silly to think now that we thought we were taking the easier shortcut! So I set out into the market, and I did a lot of research and design. In a few months later we had our first Mobile Escape Room trailer. Through a lot of time and patience that concept became successful and slowly we started adding other entertainment facilities to our mobile fleet, and today we offer over 10 unique mobile entertainment services! Then in 2021 I decided to test the waters looking at a traditional retail space again only to be introduced to my future business partner out of Atlanta, who was looking to expand his businesses to San Antonio, and everything just seemed to work out. My partner came in with two established, tried and tested brands and really needed a local resource and boots on the ground to help make it a success in Texas and here I was eager to learn about retail and running a business that doesn’t get flat tires! As different as the three businesses are, there are so many similarities, but the biggest one would have to be our customers. There’s always been something that resonated with me were the number one goal of this business is to make people happy. Not just happy with a new roof that they bought for their house or a new car or a good plate of food, but just genuinely happy for the sake of being happy, there is something pure and simple about that which continues to be a driving force in our businesses. As with most entertainment, we don’t control an essential product such as medical services, accounting, etc., nobody really needs Axe Throwing but what we provide are experiences and memories that last a lifetime. Our two brick and mortar locations have really been an eye-opening experience for me and because it comes with so many less problems than a mobile business. It has really allowed me to focus on customer experience, and the creative side which I enjoy immensely, for example, our newest location Spin Art Nation, is a relatively new concept that has had such amazing responses from customer reviews that I cannot wait till it hits the tipping point in pop culture and it hopefully gets the same name recognition as Axe Throwing or Escape Room.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

Well, certainly a big one that sticks out for me was the first time that we had a genuinely unhappy customer. For backstory, there is a mini escape room game called the hot seat, which we purchased seven years ago, but because of the no mobile nature of our business Overtime things bump into walls cable snap and sensors go down so eventually we hired a fabricator to completely reinvent the game and make it much more portable and user-friendly. Our fabricator did a phenomenal job, completely re-engineering every component of the game and making everything wireless much to the joy of our employees , all of the completely custom electronics for the game were stored in a very secure, bright orange pelican box, which was kept with the game in its trailer and right in the middle of our busy season in December filled with holiday parties. The trailer was broken into, and all the robbers saw was an expensive looking orange box and they never cared what was inside it and off they went with our one of a kind customer tech that was absolutely no use to them. To make matters worse that facility was rented out for two events over the next two days. Of course we immediately called the clients Poc and let them know and offered a ready solution, unfortunately what we learned was this never made it to the actual client that hired us, and he was extremely less than happy with what we were able to deliver, and there is no coming back from it. The client was unhappy, his Christmas party guests were unhappy, and we were unhappy. While in hindsight, it was not a near death experience for the company, it was certainly a crash course in dealing with circumstances that were out of our control.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

I believe the absolute best advice for managing any team is being an active listener. Gun to my head, I legitimately could not think of better advice as a manager and business owner. I typically have experience in many different areas which turns into advice that I can lend my staff and help them solve their own issues that aren’t always necessarily job related. often times solving team moral issues comes down to active, listening and planning, listening being the most critical step between the two. Hearing their complaints and knowing what questions to ask, can be 99% of the work, and being able and willing to put in that work in my experience goes a long way with my team.

Contact Info:

• Website: Mobileescaperoom.com
• Other: SpinArtNation.com AxeMaster.com

Image Credits
Headshot-Eric Treviño