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

NILYSHA, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

The biggest risk I have taken was starting my business. I never felt I was business savvy nor did I have the actual desire or want to have my own business. My family and friends had a lot of faith in my craft and I had yet to really see it myself. Even with feeling adamant on not wanting to have to deal with the tedious aspect of running a business, something brewing inside me kept telling me to JUST DO IT. August 2021 I took that leap and applied for my LLC to become an official business owner. Now looking back, it was the best risk I ever took. I have challenged myself on many levels especially personally. Owning my own business has allowed me to learn a lot about myself and push me to limits I never saw I could reach.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I am an Event Planner and Balloon Designer. I provide planning and décor services for any type of event (baby showers, birthday parties, weddings, etc.). My goal is to ease the stressors of planning an event. I want my clients to be able to enjoy the process and to feel confident in all their ideas they bring to me. My purpose is to bring my clients vision to reality. I have learned over the course of being in business that a lot of my clients have great ideas but the process of where to start seems to be the struggle/stressor and its my duty to alleviate that for them.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Social Media was one thing I was concerned about when starting my business. How will I get followers and my work out there for the world to see? Patience is key! Knowing when to post, what to post and how to post; it all plays a major factor in building your audience. My following started with friends and family; having them share my content helped a lot. Once I got over the 100 follower threshold I was able to navigate my content better. For myself, a lot of my following comes from my Reels on Instagram, it brings a lot of traction to my page so that is content you will see often on my page. The use of hashtags, audio has helped tremendously in my reels. The use of social media is an ongoing learning process, and I do not feel there is truly a right or wrong way to use it. It is all about capturing the attention of followers and making sure content is intriguing enough to have others not only like it but to share and save it as well.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Funding for my business came from my full time job initially. I would buy things based off the most requested services. Balloons being my top seller I made sure to have certain supplies on hand. I did not profit much in the beginning for my events since I did not have much inventory. A lot of what was being charged was for the items needed to design the event for the client. Over time I began to see the profit as my inventory grew.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.honeybook.com/widget/passionate_creationsby_ni_llc_197379/cf_id/615aea8570e03f00343cb531
• Instagram: instagram.com/passionatecreationsbyni
• Facebook: facebook.com/passionatecreationsbyni
• Other: Email: passionatecreationsbynillc@gmail.com