Sam Wai’s curiosity about an escape room in Hungary during a trip back in 2014, changed the course of his professional life. It’s also changing the professional lives of other creative practitioners and entrepreneurs, as he shares lessons and services from his own hard-won experience in the immersive sector.
An Unconventional Path
Sam’s background wasn’t in accountancy. He was working as a 3D printing projects manager when that fateful trip to Hungary changed everything. “I had played escape rooms online a lot when I was growing up,” he recalls. “When I played it in real life, that was amazing to me. It’s all I thought about after the trip, so much so that I quit my job a day later.”
His mother was understandably concerned, calling every other day to question the decision, but he was ready to start working on his own escape room. “I moved to London, and I don’t recommend this to anyone; to totally quit your day job while spending loads of money on rent and try to build a business,” he admits. “I wasted so much money.”
But he did it. Enigma Escape grew to the top of TripAdvisor, earned Critics Choice from Time Out, and eventually caught the attention of London escape room company No Escape. After selling the business just after COVID, Sam stayed on as Head of Projects and bookkeeper, helping them scale from four escape rooms to nine, working.
“I’ve been there and done that. I’ve seen the highs and the lows. I’ve seen redundancies happen. I’ve seen cash flow problems. But I’ve seen the highest of success – getting awards and making people happy,” Sam reflects. “We made hundreds of thousands of people happy with what we’ve done.”
Building Immersif
The arrival of his baby girl led Sam to take a step back from his full-time role so he could spend less time on location, and more time at home supporting his wife and newborn. A year ago – after carefully considering his professional options – he launched Immersif, initially as a bookkeeping practice. His qualifications came not from traditional study but from a decade of hands-on experience. He first started doing his own books because he was “too cheap to hire someone,” then realised those skills applied to any type of business. The Institute of Certified Bookkeepers awarded him membership and a licence to practise through their work experience route.
This new venture allowed him to work from home and stay flexible, whilst continuing to work and support an industry he loved being part of. “Honestly, I think I found my ikagai and can’t see myself doing anything else,” says Sam.
Over the past year, the business has rapidly evolved into a full accounting practice offering payroll and accounts. But Sam found himself drawn increasingly to business development and mentoring. “Everyone needs business advice right now,” he explains.
The reason is simple: Sam discovered a critical gap in the creative sector. “Creative people love their craft and have tremendous passion for the arts,” he says. “What they lacked was business acumen. You can read about it and watch videos, but if you haven’t experienced it, you won’t really know.”
Many creatives struggle to make their work financially sustainable. Even those who are doing well often aren’t earning what they could be. Sam has seen passionate, imaginative projects stall or disappear because of missing business fundamentals, poor financial management, or a lack of long-term planning.
He founded Immersif to support the immersive and creative industries, including escape rooms, immersive experiences, and the suppliers that support them – propmakers and producers, sound and lighting technicians, experience and XR designers, marketing and tech agencies, and more – through specialist bookkeeping and accounting, mentoring, and business development.
Over the past year, he’s supported clients across the UK and internationally, including TERPECA-winning escape rooms and some of the most recognisable names in immersive. His work helps clients gain clarity in their direction, confidence in their decisions, and tangible progress in their business.
In 2025, Sam received the LUCA Award for New Practice of the Year from the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers. He serves on the ICB Advisory Council, where he helps promote excellence and shape the future of the bookkeeping profession in the UK. His work, as he puts it, “sits at the intersection of creativity and business, helping brilliant ideas become viable and profitable while staying true to the creative vision.”
The Reality of Running a Creative Business
One of Sam’s most valuable insights comes from his own painful experience: the sheer administrative burden of running a business. “I set up an escape room business because I wanted to design a really cool escape room so that people could play it,” he says. “But then there were other things I didn’t realise – there’s so much admin involved. There’s payroll, HR, insurance, legal stuff. All this boring admin work that you have to do to keep the business running, and you have to learn it the hard way.”
He sees this pattern repeatedly with the creatives he mentors. “Once you start a business, this all comes at you in one go,” he explains. “A lot of us set up businesses by ourselves, not with friends or a team, which makes it even harder.”
The Core Problems
Through his mentees, Sam has observed the issues that plague creative entrepreneurs in the immersive space again and again. “Their business is not making enough sales, or they’re established and plateauing. They don’t know how to make more money and find more customers.”
But the funding challenge goes deeper than just sales. Sam encounters many creatives who’ve applied for grants and public funding only to find themselves stuck in a waiting pattern. “They’ve chosen the path where, if they don’t have the funding, then it won’t start, and they have to wait for the next round of funding. They’re delaying their dream,” he says. “I use these calls to help them see that there are so many ways to find money. It’s not only just public funding – you can have private funding like loans, fund it yourself, find investors, even pre-sell tickets. There’s an endless amount of things you can do to get your project up and running.”
The other major challenge is visibility. “How do you stand out, especially if you’re a service provider?” Sam asks. “I’m teaching people how to be known as the go-to person for their discipline, for their craft. Personal branding is a big thing these days. You have to work on that.”
For Sam, these two factors – funding and standing out – represent the majority of his mentoring conversations. “It’s not really required for me to mentor them for their creative work because they’re really good at that,” he notes. “It’s more about these business fundamentals.”
The Service Spectrum
Sam’s mentoring takes several forms, depending on where a business is in its journey. His informal mentoring calls are hour-long sessions where he simply listens and advises. “Some people use me as their accountability partner – I talk with them once a month and ask, have you done this thing yet? That keeps them moving and not procrastinating,” he explains. “I’m also a soundboard to many. They can throw me their ideas and I’m an external point of view, a fresh set of eyes, because they’re so in the weeds that they can’t see clearly.”
For more established businesses, he offers diagnostic reports. “I look at your business and find where the weak spots are, wherever you want me to look,” he says. This might mean going as a secret shopper to a show or escape room, observing how it functions, evaluating customer service, and providing recommendations for improvement.
His most comprehensive offering is a business development programme – a transformational service for clients who want to, for example, double their sales. “It’s the whole package: diagnostic reports, recommendations, financial analysis,” Sam explains. “Any part of improving a business – that’s my ultimate aim.”
A Unique Position
Sam believes he may be the only person in the world offering specialised accounting and business mentoring for the immersive sector. “I tried really hard to find if anyone does accounting for the immersive sector anywhere in any country, and they don’t specialise here,” he says. “I think there’s a good reason in that our industry is actually quite new. It hasn’t been going on for decades. So you really have to have lived it to be able to advise in this sector.”
What makes Sam’s approach distinctive is his dual perspective. “The left brain is the creation, and the right brain is the logic. I think I’m blessed that I have both, and I’m putting it to good use.”
A Growing Community
The range of people Sam works with reflects the diversity of the immersive sector itself. He’s mentored creative technologists starting to sell their services, engineers setting up niche practices, recruitment specialists, musicians expanding their studios, escape room owners from small mom-and-pop shops to larger chains, and tech companies supporting the industry – including Clockwork Dog / COGS, one of his largest clients.
“I think I’ve touched on every single type of discipline, which is really good because I love to refer people I’ve worked with to each other,” Sam says. “I remember everyone. So I’m trying to create this interconnected web of people that can support each other.”
This network-building reflects his broader vision: “To help achieve immersive ‘what-ifs.’ And to do that is to build a community of skilled creatives that can support each other. It always brings me joy to be able to connect others.”
While his accounting and bookkeeping services are UK-only, Sam’s business development work is international. He’s currently working with escape rooms and immersive businesses in America, Berlin, Barcelona, and Prague. “Geography is not a boundary – it’s just business principles,” he says. “I can look at their financial statements and learn from their data to give them insights.”
One recent project exemplifies his commitment to the industry. “One of my current clients I picked up last week is an escape room that advertised they were closing down within a month,” he explains. “I reached out to see if I could save them, and now I’m their agent and introducing them to potential buyers. Hopefully good news will follow very soon.”
The Mission
At the heart of everything Sam does is a simple but powerful mission: helping creators earn more. “I found that earning more solves everything,” he explains. “If you have money, you can solve almost every problem in the business. So if I can help you make more money, then that would be the ideal outcome.”
But there’s also a more personal motivation. “If anything, I’m just here to make friends and enjoy more immersive things,” he admits with a laugh. “Maybe selfishly, because the more I can help others build fantastic productions, the more chances I get to enjoy them.”
It’s this combination – business acumen borne from hard experience, genuine passion for the immersive sector, and a desire to see creative visions succeed rather than fail for lack of business fundamentals – that makes Sam’s service unique. As he puts it: “Think of business as a game. If you know the rules of the game, you have more of a chance to succeed. Creative people don’t know the rules. So if I set them up with these rules and guidance, they’re more likely to succeed.”
For an industry built on imagination and innovation, that practical guidance might be exactly what’s needed to turn creative dreams into sustainable realities.
Immersif is currently offering a free 30-minute mentoring session to IEN members. Find out more and book online at https://immersif-free-mentoring.scoreapp.com/
