Today we’d like to introduce you to Neko Farmer.
Neko, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
From a young age, I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit, with my first “business” being a lead pencil repair service in elementary school. I figured, since I always tended to grow fond of using certain pencils, that everyone else would as well. And so I used that as a sales pitch whenever I noticed someone’s lead pencil was low on lead, had run out of eraser or had a spring/buttons going bad. It was actually a pretty good gig as a kid because I would find parts all over the classroom floor.
Once I got into high school however, things got kind of rough for a number of years. I unfortunately got drawn down a bad path and ended up associating with people I shouldn’t have who pulled me into the street life for a bit, but my grandparents stayed on me and kept me moving forward. After getting into a lot of trouble in 10th grade, I was pulled out of high school by my grandmother and put into the G.E.D program where I was able to graduate quickly. I remember I wanted to take a break before pursuing a degree but my grandmother wasn’t having it, and so I continued to graduate as a Networking Specialist in the IT field.
After graduating, I tried for almost a year to find a job at a computer repair store, but after being declined over and over again after each follow-up, I applied for a job at a large computer repair company who said I didn’t have enough sales experience to fix computers. That was the last straw. I made the decision to start my own business and got together $100 I had saved up in birthday money. Then once I told her my plan, my grandmother once again helped me out and invested all of the pennies she had saved up into my dream, which came out to an additional $50 – just enough to purchase a business license. That was in 2014, and I’ve been working ever since.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Unfortunately the path of entrepreneurship is not only the road less traveled but also one of the most bumpy. During my journey, I’ve run into a number of obstacles ranging from small issues like last-minute items needed to pass a fire inspection and shipping delays for mission-critical items, to big ones like dealing with saboteurs from within the company, only having $30 in the bank with thousands of dollars worth of bills due in a week, and of course having to completely shut down multiple locations due to a pandemic.
I cherish and often think back on these moments because while they are a big deal at the time when you have your back up against the wall, that is when you can truly see what you’re made of and gain an understanding of what level you’re operating at as an entrepreneur. I see business as a sea of chaos that builds the strength of those who would traverse it, and each wave you can endure reinforces your hull.
Lock City Escape Games, Glitch Guards and Regal Vending – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Since opening my first official business in 2014, I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to branch off into a number of industries including technology, entertainment, food services and advertising. As of this writing my favorite companies and web-property are Glitch Guards, Lock City Escape Games, Regal Vending, and Eggabase.com. Each of these companies falls into one of the aforementioned categories and I’m happy to say I’m proud of all of them for different achievements.
Glitch Guards is a technology company specializing in business support, website design, SEO and digital marketing. We’ve been growing at a very steady rate year after year while introducing new services like website hosting, domain name sales and cybersecurity services for business websites. We also have a couple of software programs currently in development with one set to launch this upcoming school year.
Lock City Escape Games is an escape room company located in Carrollton. Escape rooms are like real-life video games where you and your family or friends are put into a room and must solve puzzles using clues you find in order to complete a mission before time runs out. We currently have two locations as of this writing, as we bought out a competitor in January of 2020. We just recently released a virtual live version of our premier game, “The Hacker’s Lair” to help people have fun during the Covid-19 pandemic since they’re stuck at home with nothing to do. Since we were early adapters of this new kind of entertainment it’s been exciting watching it progress and become a successful pivot. We are working on converting our other popular rooms into live virtual versions as well.
Regal Vending is a regional vending company. I like this company because, in addition to getting a free handful of skittles every now and again, we’re able to use some of our vending devices to directly help our veterans and those who are homeless by providing them with funds, food and shelter.
Eggabase.com is a website that indexes secrets found in video games, TV shows, movies, etc. and has become an authority website in the easter egg community since it’s launch in 2014. It’s used as a citation in a number of large publications and we even had a video go viral a couple of years ago. I’m really proud of it because it was supposed to be a fun side project that grew into something a little more.
More than anything, I always hear people comment on how professional, flashy and over the top each company is, so I’d say that’s what we’re becoming known for. I try to always set us apart by looking at our top competitors going into a field and then amplifying what they’re doing by introducing updated/new technology and adding an extra layer of style.
If the industry norm is clipboards and paper, we’ll use tablets. Since our area was used to cheaper made escape rooms, we’ve introduced Hollywood quality sets with hi-tech puzzles. If most authority sites in a niche are getting away with minimal content and a ton of ads, we’ll not only upgrade the website features we use but write highly detailed articles and then run 25% less ads to keep people wanting to come back. During the design phase we’re always thinking about customers. What would impress them the most? Why are they coming to us? Did they leave happy? Money is always a secondary concern to customer obsession.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I would say luck has played a very large role in all of my businesses, but luck means nothing if you can’t identify and use the opportunities to their fullest potential. Here’s a story about luck. Before I had even thought about starting Lock City and was still working to gain a foothold for Glitch Guards, I had a few thousand dollars saved up and asked God, “If you can just give me a chance, even a small sign, I’ll show you what good I can do for the world with whatever comes from that opportunity.” I never asked to win the lottery or anything, but simply asked for the opportunity to build an avalanche out of a snowball – I just needed some kind of guidance.
Around that time, I was reading through some extremely obscure post on Reddit, scrolling through hundreds of random comments when something caught my eye. A random user I had never seen nor heard of had commented to someone else saying, in passing, that they should invest in a cryptocurrency called Ethereum because it was about to be big. No more detail, just a short sentence. So I Googled Ethereum, read up on cryptocurrency for about two days and invested half of my savings into it to test the waters. One week later my investment had increased by 25%, and it kept growing that way for weeks.
Of course, being young I immediately started shopping for new cars, but fortunately, I was able to step back and remember the promise I made and what I had asked for. I knew this was my only chance to build that avalanche, and so I withdrew my earnings and began preparing to open up a Glitch Guards office. After months of non-stop planning, I had a complete business plan, a location picked out, each piece of furniture was in a shopping cart and I was ready to click, “Buy” on my phone. Then I got an email…
That email was from an escape room my mother had taken my cousin, brother and myself to a few years prior. Up until that point, I had never gotten an email from them, but I once again trusted it as a sign. I dropped the Glitch Guards office plans, called up a real estate agent and opened an escape room in Carrollton nine months later. It’s been growing ever since.
My view on luck is that when you look for opportunities in the world, luck becomes more available to you, but you have to trust your gut. The only thing is, many people don’t prepare for that lucky opportunity when it comes along, and so it disappears without them ever knowing. Always study, always save, always be vigilant in seeking out success. You never know when your “luck” is right around the corner.
Pricing:
- All of our physical escape rooms are $25 per player
- Our virtual live escape rooms are $55 per household, and $15 for each additional household/connection
- Website Hosting starts at $7.99/month and will never increase in price
- We have some of the cheapest website SSL Certificates on the internet starting at just $20/year
- Our .com domain names are a flat and permanent rate of $8.99/year
Contact Info:
- Address: 101 Northwinds Blvd., Carrollton, Georgia 30117
- Website: www.lockcityescapes.com, www.glitchguards.com, www.regalvending.com
- Phone: (770) 954-5106
- Email: neko@lockcityescapes.
com - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lockcitycarrollton
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