Sue Bowler: The Balloon Expert

Can You Create a Full-time Income From Balloons? by Guest Blogger Sonia Payne This question is something I frequently get asked by people growing their balloon businesses. It is also a question all balloon business owners ask themselves at some point. For some it is before they start their business, and for others it comes a little further down the line. In this blog I am going to look at whether it’s really possible and what you need to do in order to create a full-time income from your balloons business. Full-time Income Means Different Things To DifferentPeople Before we get into whether it is possible… I guess we need to understand that full-time income means different things to different people. Your personal circumstances, household income, expenditure and number of dependents will obviously have a big impact on this. The hours you have available to dedicate to growing your business and the experience you have at running a business also have a bearing on the success of a business...

When calculating the number of balloons that you will need to create decor, knowing which formula's to use can be a hugely beneficial.  Let me give you an example: I want to create a garland of balloons to cover a hoop, see example below. How can you calculate the number of balloons you will need? Photo courtesy of AeröPole System There are several formulas that you can use to give you an accurate answer. Let's start by determining the size of a hoop.To work out the circumference of the hoop your first need to measure the diameter.  The circumference is the measurement of a circle around the edge of the hoop or any circular frame. The diameter is the measurement straight across a circle or hoop from one side to the other. To get started you will need to measure your hoop or circular frame from edge to edge to find the diameter. For this example let us say that our hoops diameter measures 6ft or 1.82m. To calculate the circumference of our hoop we multiply 6 (the diameter of th...

How many of you look at Instagram and balloon-related Facebook Groups and see pictures of large scale decor, and worry that your business will never be big enough to do anything like that?   Corporate Decor by Colin Stewart, CBA, of Stewart's Baskets & Balloons in Toronto, Canada. What's stopping you?  Confidence Experience  Contacts When you start out in any profession, the learning curve is inevitable, and balloon artistry is no exception. We need to understand the basic techniques and master them, we also need the opportunity to grow our skills through practice, and finally we need to grow our portfolio so that we can 'wow' our customers with our work!  Confidence There will always be others who have more confidence and appear to have the ability to wing it through life! However, for most of us, confidence grows with experience.  Experience Experience can be gained in a number of ways:  By attending hands-on training co...