Owing money at tax time used to make me cry. Actual tears. One year I owed $10,000 with zero plan, and the cash I had to hand over was the same money I'd set aside to pay myself. So when I say the tax conversation can get emotional... I mean it. The…
Forty Years, Three Generations and the Pricing Mistake They Keep Seeing Somewhere in Louisville, Kentucky there is a building where every bottle of HI-FLOAT has been made for the last four decades. It has never traveled more than five miles from wh…
Losing a great annual client stinks. Especially when it's one of those easy, same-time-every-year gigs that you count on. After COVID, so many of my long-standing venue and corporate contacts just... disappeared. Furloughs turned into layoffs, busin…
Ten years ago I made my own logo. It has little dots in it and four or five colors, and it is on the side of my van, so it is staying. What I did not know back then is that a logo like that disappears on a t-shirt. One of the colors vanishes into th…
Most of us use a tiny fraction of what our CRM can actually do for our balloon business. You get it set up, send a few invoices, and then never touch the settings again... meanwhile the platform is sitting there loaded with features that could quiet…
Ever tried to pin down when the next big balloon industry training is coming up on the calendar, and ended up with fourteen tabs open? You are not alone. That exact frustration is what led Dori to build something our whole industry has quietly been …
Some days the to-do list just wins. You blink and it is 5pm, and the one thing you actually wanted to do never happened because thirty smaller things kept jumping the line. If that sounds like your average Tuesday, there is a simple time management …
Every so often a balloon job comes along that stops the scroll... the kind that drips down the front of a sorority house or covers an entire building. Those installs look like they must be paying six figures. A lot of the time they are not. And that…
Going full-time in your balloon business sounds like the dream until the questions start piling up. Where does health insurance come from when nobody hands you a benefits packet? Who saves for retirement when there is no employer match? What actuall…
Most of us start in this industry the same way; a few balloons, a lot of trial and error, a business that slowly takes shape. What's rare is watching someone take that foundation and build something entirely new on top of it to become a balloon indu…
Ever thought about doing something so big your entire town can't stop talking about it? That's exactly what Jodie of Pop by Posh Party Designs and Event Space pulled off in Leominster, Massachusetts, and I got to chat with her about how she orchestr…
How to Build a Balloon Business You Can Actually Walk Away From Most of us never think about the ending when we start a balloon business. We're just trying to survive the next install. But my conversation with Jill flipped that thinking on its head…
Every balloon business owner gets the email. A charity, a school, a church, or a community event reaching out to ask for free balloons. It puts you in an awkward spot; you want to be generous, but you also have a business to run. The good news is yo…
Every balloon business owner hits the moment where a job just is not right. Maybe the date is booked, maybe the venue is too far, or maybe something about the inquiry makes your stomach drop a little. Saying no to clients feels uncomfortable, so we …
Getting your face on a city bus for free sounds like a fantasy; Tashonda of The Balloon Parlor actually pulled it off... and it's a beautiful example of community partnerships for balloon businesses. I interviewed Tashonda, a Cincinnati balloon art…
Scrolling through Instagram and suddenly feeling like your balloon business isn't measuring up? Same. We've all done it. We see someone post a massive install or announce they're "fully booked" and that little voice in our heads starts whispering th…
For months I've been thinking that my ChatGPT is dumb. It ignores me, it lies to me, it promises a spreadsheet and then vanishes. Then I sat down with my friend Lenor and realized the problem was never the robot... it was the person typing. Here's w…
Sometimes the bravest move you can make in your balloon business isn't scaling up. It's scaling back and transitioning your business into what actually works. I sat down with Amy of It's My Party in Dyer, Indiana, and she dropped some serious truth…
Three people in a balloon business partnership sounds like a recipe for chaos. But Heather, Brian and Megan from Soul Sisters Creations in Marysville, Ohio, are proving it can actually be the thing that accelerates your growth. Whether you're think…
Running a balloon business means wearing a dozen different hats every single day. One moment you are designing an elegant garland, the next you are trying to write a witty Instagram caption, ordering specific latex counts, or chasing down clients …
Most of us are so focused on booking the next job or raising our prices that we overlook the money that's already sitting right in front of us. Whether it's points we're not collecting, balloons we're not reusing, or returns we keep forgetting to …
As a solopreneur, it is incredibly easy to get trapped in a spiral of overcomplication. When you look for business advice, you are often flooded with "big business" frameworks (things like managing massive leadership teams, building complex corpor…
Running a balloon business is physically demanding, mentally exhausting and emotionally draining… sometimes all before lunch. So when Shelby of Sunny Day Party Art wanted to record an episode about self care for balloon business owners, I jumped a…
Every single person on the planet has a birthday. In the creative and event industry, that fact represents an unparalleled, year-round market. Unlike specific seasonal holidays or niche milestone events, birthdays happen 365 days a year, cutting acr…