We recently connected with Brittany Welsch and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Brittany, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

Being a family business owner I feel as though family businesses are important. Working together as a family unit not only supports our family financially, but allows us to bond and grow as a family. Having a family business allows us more time with our children as they grow and as a mother I am able to schedule my work around my children’s activities so I never miss a beat. Being a family owned and operated business, we are the face of our own business which allows us to make connections with our local community. The pitfalls that we encounter at times are always being in “work mode”. There is always things that need to be done to keep our small business flourishing so it can be difficult at times to disconnect from the business and just spend time as a family without work involved. We do believe in allowing our children to join our business and they actually do help us on occasion. Having our children involved teaches them about entrepreneurship and gives them a “boss” mentality instead of a “workers” mentality. They are able to learn financial responsibility and the importance of working for what you want in life. We don’t necessarily want them to take over our business, but we want them to be confident in being successful entrepreneurs when the time comes. Our personal experience as a family business makes us believe there are many benefits to being a family owned business.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a mother to 2 young boys ages 8 and 2 with a loving and supportive husband by my side. I graduated with my Masters in Psychology and have a passion for children. I had my youngest child during Covid (2021) and was working a typical 8-5 career. At that time I was sent home to work and was challenged with trying to keep up my career and raise my children. I decided I wanted something that would allow me more freedom to be present with my children and decided to quit my job and be a stay at home mom. During that time I was home, me and my husband brainstormed on opening a business and that is when we came up with the idea of doing party rentals for toddlers. Having a young child during Covid we found it was very difficult to find a safe place to take him to play. We knew our business idea had to be something parents would feel comfortable allowing their child to take part in. Just Tots Soft Play was created to be a safe, fun, and convenient way for parents to entertain their young toddlers. We provide soft play equipment in a gated area age appropriate for 0-5. We have ball pits and toddler sized bounce houses. We travel to our clients homes, venues, or wherever their event is to setup our equipment for the day. All of our equipment is cleaned and sanitized before and after each use. We are basically a “mobile playground”. We have prices for everyone and try to make sure we stay affordable for all. We can set our play areas up indoors and outdoors. We have setups for small spaces and can do big corporate events as well. We have equipment for luxurious events and do our best to match what the theme of the event is. While birthday parties are our most popular events, we also setup for weddings, baby showers, baptisms, corporate events, and more.

Since beginning our business in 2021 we have grown and flourished at a very quick pace. Our goal was originally to have around 3 events per month. We are currently doing 5-8 events per weekend. We never imagined our small business idea would have been as successful as it has and we are extremely proud of where we are at today, just 2 two years later.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Our best source for new clients has been social media with Instagram being our biggest, followed by Facebook. We also receive a good amount of new clients from Google. We encourage our clients to leave reviews on Google and have found this to help our business.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

We started our business as just a side hustle so I could make a little extra as a stay at home mom. We began with just one single package for my son’s first birthday. After his party we began to rent the package; after a few rentals we saw a need for a girl theme package. Which was our first pink package. From that point we were inspired by the feedback we were receiving and the interest in our setups. We ordered a few more items to match themes and enhance our setups. We had a goal of a few bookings a month and the ability to provide our children with parties. Now we are renting storage units full of equipment and beyond busy every weekend. We created a web-site to help our clients with the visual of our business. Our income quickly went from being “extra cash” to making more than I did in my full time 8-5 career. We are still operating as just a husband and wife duo, but have been able to hire some teenagers to do cleaning of equipment during the week. Also on the weekends we’ve hired help with pickups. We are honestly surprised at how quickly this business has flourished in just two years.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.justtotssoftplay.com
• Instagram: @justtotssoftplay
• Facebook: Just Tots Soft Play