We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rachel Herrod. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rachel below.

Rachel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

As a mother-daughter duo we have lots of thoughts and experience with a family owned business. For our family, starting How About Balloons has been a wonderful adventure. We work well together and the best part is we know that we have each other’s best interests at heart! It has been a fun journey working together and figuring out the best ways to communicate as business partners, not just as mother and daughter. Our family is very supportive of our business and having my kids work for us one day would be a dream! With any business, it takes some to figure out what works best for you. We realized early on that often times we were saying the same thing, but in two totally different ways. Fine tuning our communication style has been essential to our success! We have learned new skills side by side, and we believe one of the keys to success as a family business is taking the time to step back and remember why you started your business. We continue to find the joy in our family business by enjoying the ride and looking back at how far we’ve come whenever we get the chance!

Rachel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

In 2020, like the rest of the world, our world was turned upside down with the Pandemic. When the world shut down, I was 3 weeks into my maternity leave from my job as a Pediatric Dental Hygienist, and Lisa was working as she had been for decades as an accountant. The Pandemic allowed both of us to slow down, and eventually the slow got boring. In 2021, we started learning about balloons more, and decided to go all in on a balloon company. Fridays became How About Balloon days, where we visited with vendors, learned new techniques, and started working on growing our social media and building our website.

We knew when we started How About Balloons that we wanted to have something to offer our clients at every price point. Having a price transparent website was also very important to us. We wanted people to be able to visit our website and get to know us, see our work, and be able to find something that fit any budget they may have.

As time went on, we grew to realize that while we love doing all sorts of events, our favorite installations are corporate installs. We adore the creative opportunities that come with working for event planners, large companies, and in large venues. We knew we wanted to develop our company to be able to accept any job on any scale. Being able to try new things and give inquiring clients the “yes” they are looking for is something we are very proud of!

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

We love this question! We like to think that being able to pivot is a specialty of ours. There have been countless times when we have arrived to an installation to find that the original plan simply isn’t the best plan. We believe that our communication skills have helped us tremendously when having to pivot. Our clients count on us to bring the best version of their vision to life, and sometimes tweaks need to be made on the spot.

How About Balloons itself is basically one big pivot in life. Going from working as an accountant and dental hygienist, to being co-owners of a family business has been a big 180. It has come with so many blessings that we continue to count whenever we can. Family has always been the number one for us, but now with owning a company together, we get to spend time together and prioritize family even more! It’s been one wonderful ride and we can’t wait to see what the future holds.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

We truly enjoy our clients. We believe that building a genuine relationship with your clients is a non-negotiable part of owning a family business. When someone orders balloons from us for their event, they are trusting us to help them celebrate something special, and we take that seriously. Birthdays, Weddings, Baby Showers, etc. are all huge moments in a person’s life and we want to make that day as easy and special as possible for our clients.

Something that is so special to us is that we have often either been in our clients’ shoes before (wedding day, baby’s first birthday) or are helping them celebrate a milestone we hope to celebrate one day (75th birthday!) We almost get to relive, or get a sneak peek at the future each time we do an event. Even business events! We’ve done Holiday parties before that give us big hopes and dreams for our own business. Often, we leave an installation giggling about how adorable and excited the hosts are on these special days.

Of course, building a brand that people want to continue to use can’t be based only on having a great time with our clients, we have to do some back end work as well. We send out marketing emails about quarterly just to remind clients of upcoming events, especially for times like graduation season when we will book out completely. We also try to keep a consistent social media presence going. We have a streamlined inquiry process that allows our clients to quickly reach us, and we take phone calls as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.howaboutballoons.com
• Instagram: @how_about_balloons