Today we’d like to introduce you to Wayne Felix.
Wayne, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I started Me 2 You Game Truck in 2016, and honestly, it started because I was miserable.
At the time I was a medical billing collector for a surgical company — reviewing insurance payments against contracts, chasing carriers for corrections, fielding patient calls. It was stable. It was fine. And it was slowly suffocating me. My wife and I were six years married, my son Liam had just turned three, and through a combination of frustration, timing, and a financial window my wife opened up for me, I decided to leave and build something of my own.
The early days were exactly as messy as you’d expect. For the first three months I tried to overlap — running the new business while still holding down the job, stepping away from my desk to take customer calls until my boss ran out of patience. Once I went all in, it was one truck, a three-year-old at home who needed help with potty training, and a skill set that had nothing to do with hauling a 55-foot trailer through residential neighborhoods. People assume the first real obstacle was finding customers, or pricing, or building a website. It wasn’t. It was learning to drive the trailer without damaging it. Everything else, it turned out, I could figure out.
The customers came. The events ran. The reviews started stacking up. A year or two in we added laser tag. Then inflatables. Then virtual reality, RC car racing, and indoor game arenas. None of it was added because a business plan said to — every service got added because a customer needed it and I saw the gap.
Ten years later, that one truck in Granite City, Illinois has become the most comprehensive mobile entertainment operation in the St. Louis and Metro East market: six staffed services, a full-time team, part-time Event Managers, more than 380 five-star Google reviews, and over 4,000 families and organizations served. Somewhere in there the business quietly changed shape on us. We’re not really a birthday party company anymore. We’re an events company that also does parties. Schools, churches, municipalities, festivals and companies hire us to assemble and run an entire event — game truck, laser tag, inflatables, VR, RC racing — under one contract, with one team, from setup to teardown. Birthday parties are still how most people meet us. They’re just not what the business is.
I’ll be honest about the cost, too. The business has not always been easy on my family. Working weekends in the early years created real strain. There were arguments with Liam about why he couldn’t take the spot of a paying guest at a party. There were seasons where the company demanded more than it gave back. But the mission never changed: build something that eventually runs without me in the middle of every event, so I can be present at home instead of just physically nearby. Hiring Jason, building out the Event Manager team, and investing in systems has been as much a family strategy as a growth strategy.
I’m not there yet. I’m working toward it with intention.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No, it hasn’t been smooth — but the struggles were almost never the ones I expected going in.
The first one was completely literal. I had no idea how to pull a 55-foot trailer through residential neighborhoods, and that was genuinely the hardest part of year one. Not marketing, not pricing, not the website. Backing a trailer into a cul-de-sac without taking out someone’s mailbox. I learned it the way you learn most things in a small business, on the job as I go.
The second was money and timing. I left a stable paycheck with a three-year-old at home, and for the first three months I tried to run the business while still working the job, ducking away from my desk to take customer calls until my boss finally ran out of patience. There was no soft landing after that.
The third is the one nobody warns you about: this business is seasonal and weather-dependent. A rained-out laser tag field or a cold snap in February doesn’t care about your fixed costs. Learning to plan for the slow months instead of being surprised by them every year took me longer than it should have.
The fourth was staffing. Handing over an event is not like handing over a task. When you show up at a school with 300 kids waiting, or a family’s once-in-a-lifetime birthday, the person representing you has to care as much as you do. Finding, training, and keeping people like that and building a system so the standard doesn’t depend on whether I’m personally there, has been the hardest and most important work of the last several years.
And the honest one: my family paid for a lot of this. Working weekends in the early years created real strain. I had arguments with my own son about why he couldn’t take the spot of a paying guest at a party. There were seasons where the company took more than it gave back. I don’t tell that story to be dramatic; I tell it because it’s the reason the business is built the way it is now. Every system, every hire, every process exists so that eventually this thing runs without me standing in the middle of every event.
The most recent challenge has been less dramatic and more interesting: realizing we had outgrown our own description of ourselves. We spent years telling everyone we were a birthday party company, while the revenue was quietly telling us we had become an events company — schools, churches, cities, festivals — that also happens to run the best birthday party in the market. Catching up to what we’d actually become is the work I’m in right now.
As you know, we’re big fans of Me 2 You Game Truck. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Me 2 You Game Truck is a mobile entertainment company serving St. Louis, Missouri and Metro East Illinois. The simplest way to describe us: we’re an events company that also does parties.
We run six fully staffed services — video game trucks, mobile laser tag, inflatables and bounce houses, virtual reality, indoor game arenas, and RC car racing — and we bring all of it to you. Your driveway, your school parking lot, your church lot, your festival grounds. No venue to rent, no equipment to figure out, no shared party room with strangers.
What sets us apart is that we’re the only provider in this region offering all six of those services under one brand. That matters more than it sounds. When a school plans a field day, or a church plans a fall festival, or a city plans a community day, they’re normally calling four different vendors, coordinating four different arrival times, and praying all four show up. We assemble and run the entire event. One contract, one team, from setup to teardown. That’s the actual product. The equipment is just what it’s made of.
The second thing that sets us apart is that nothing we do is a drop-off rental. Almost every service comes with a trained Event Manager who arrives early, runs the rotations, coaches the kids who need coaching, keeps the energy where it should be, and leaves the site cleaner than we found it. The host should never have to lift a finger, referee a line, or manage a piece of equipment. If the parent or the PTO coordinator ends up working their own event, we failed.
What I’m proudest of, brand-wise, is the boring stuff. Since 2016 we’ve served more than 4,000 families and organizations and earned over 380 verified five-star Google reviews. We don’t double-book a date. Every event gets a “we’re on our way” text the morning of, before the customer has to wonder. A child’s birthday happens once. A school field day has 300 kids standing outside waiting. A post-prom has exactly one night. Reliability isn’t a marketing angle for us, it’s the entire promise.
We’re also a faith-driven, family-first, locally owned business, not a franchise. Schools, churches and nonprofits book with no deposit required, because volunteer-run organizations shouldn’t have to float us money. Pricing is published and transparent: birthday packages start at $329, our school field-day packages run $3,500–$5,000, and our multi-service community events and festivals are built to scale from there.
What I’d want your readers to know is this: we’re not selling gaming equipment. We’re selling a day that goes right, the parent who actually got to enjoy their kid’s party, the PTO chair who got to be a person instead of a project manager, the kid who still talks about it a year later. That’s the job.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
A few that have actually changed how I run things:
The Bible. That’s not a throwaway answer — this is a Christian-owned business, and how I treat employees, price a job, and handle a hard customer conversation all trace back there. It’s the filter, not a decoration.
“$100M Offers” and “$100M Leads” by Alex Hormozi. These reframed the way I think about what we’re actually selling. We stopped selling hours of equipment and started building packaged offers people can say yes to without a phone call.
“Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss. Most of my sales conversations are with a parent or a PTO volunteer who’s nervous about spending money on something they can’t see in advance. Listening more than pitching works far better than any closing script.
“Profit First” by Mike Michalowicz. In a seasonal business, this one is close to survival gear. It taught me to plan for February in July.
“10x Is Easier Than 2x” by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy. This is the book that pushed me to stop trying to be at every event and start building a team and a system that could run without me.
Tools-wise: GoHighLevel runs our CRM, booking and follow-up; QuickBooks keeps me honest about the numbers; and over the last year I’ve leaned heavily on AI tools to do the work of a small back office — analyzing our booking data, writing outreach, cleaning up processes. As a small business owner, that’s been the biggest leverage shift I’ve had in years.
And honestly, the most useful resource isn’t a book. It’s the local Chambers of Commerce I’m part of across the Metro East. Ten minutes with another owner who’s two years ahead of you is worth a lot of reading.
Pricing:
- Birthdays and private events start at $329 for mobile laser tag and $449 for our 2-hour Game Truck party — fully staffed, up to 20 guests, brought to your driveway.
- Most-booked birthday package: The Hero Party, $649 — game truck plus a VR station, racing wheel, swag and a red carpet for the guest of honor. The Double-Header (Game Truck + Laser Tag, 4 hours, one host) is $949.
- School field days (weekdays) are bundled at $3,500, $4,000 or $5,000 for a 4-hour multi-service package — game truck, laser tag, obstacle courses, inflatables and all staffing included.
- Community events and festivals: The Community Day starts at $5,000 and The Signature Festival starts at $9,500 — multiple staffed services run under one contract by one team. Larger custom activations are quoted individually.
- A $100 deposit holds a private date, and schools, churches and nonprofits book with no deposit at all. Delivery, setup and teardown are free within 29 miles of Granite City, IL. Add-ons include VR from $450, Indoor Game Arena from $500 and RC car racing from $250.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://me2yougametruck.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/me2yougt/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Me2YouGameTruck/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@threefirstnames
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/me-2-you-game-truck-granite-city-3
- Other: https://event.me2yougametruck.com
