We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shayla Maddox a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Shayla, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you tell us a bit about who your hero is and the influence they’ve had on you?

My hero is Maya Angelou. I always chose to be Maya Angelou for my school and church black history plays. I knew her story so much that I felt like no one could tell her story better than me. I related to her in so many ways and looked to be just like her one day. We both experienced childhood traumas. I understood her feelings very much of keeping silent throughout her younger life. She was literally everything you can think of a mother, teacher, singer, writer, activists and more! I wanted to be just like her, a phenomenal woman with many titles to her name. Her life experiences gave me so much hope that I can pushing and going forward with everything that I would like to do in life even after tough life experiences as a child and through an divorce. No matter what you go through, no matter how many storms may come your way, trouble doesn’t last always and you will come out shining in the end. That being said I want to follow similar paths in being a phenomenal mother, wife, event/party service owner, business coach, multi business owner, realtor, investor, author, speaker and whatever else my brain tells me to do after I dream about it lol

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

Hello, My name is Shayla Maddox. I am a mother of three beautiful children, Kayla, Skylar and KJ. I was born and raised in Chattanooga, TN. My business started as a hobby and from when I used to help my family and friends with their weddings, birthday parties, showers, and etc. I found it hard finding others to be dedicated and on time to help with events that I helped host. I also found it difficult renting from many different party rental companies and wishing I can get everything from one place. I wanted to solve this issue by providing professional event staffing services and to have staff available to work your events while you are enjoying your own event! I also wanted to have party rental options available for those looking for rental add ons to their events.

My company provides event staffing services from hosts, setup/decorators, food servers and after event cleaners. We also provide party rental attractions from inflatables, toddler soft play rentals, inflatable movies, snow cone machines, popcorn machines, cotton candy machines and more! I have future plans in adding photo booth rentals and having more event service options by providing event planners, photographers, DJs, bartenders and more!

What sets my business apart from others is that we want to provide it all for you instead of you having to use different other party services for your event. We can provide event staffing to help with your events and provide the party rentals at the same time. We want to make you feel like family and that you will have us on speed dial when something is needed! My services are not offered as much locally and I want to help those looking for an all purpose event company to help with their events.

The party rental attractions that I have are one of a kind because they are uniquely made to bring the fun to you! Whether your child’s birthday party needs a bounce house and cotton candy machine, or a soft play set rental for a toddler’s 1st birthday or daycare event. Or maybe you are wanting to watch movies with popcorn on a 17 ft inflatable screen in your backyard, we got it all for you! We also provide hosts to help work your parties with setting up, serving food to guests and cleaning up afterwards if needed. The hosts can also work the snow cone, cotton candy or popcorn machines which is a popular booking for church events, school events and corporate events.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social media is one of the biggest platforms to get your business out there. Rather if you are using Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, you can make one post that can go viral and it reaches everyone around the world. Viral posts are not easy and I haven’t got to that point but a thing called ” keep posting” will get you the leads you want. I used to feel like no one was actually caring about the things that I was posting, hardly any likes, shares or comments. Then I realized that I was talking and reaching the wrong people. The friends only on my personal Facebook or Instagram list are usually your least supporters to be honest. Those that really support you are actually following your business pages or subscribed to your subscriptions.

To reach the exact audience that I needed, I had to learn social media management. I enrolled in an online course that was recommended to me by a good friend called Udemy “Social Media Management”. I learned what platforms are best for my business such as Facebook and Instagram. I also learned how to run advertisements and how to target the right audience that I needed from the age group, location and input keywords/topics that related to my business so my ads will pop up on the right audience newsfeed. Posting all day is fine, but if you can get your post scheduled at the right times and paid ads running on their own, it takes less work off of you while giving you leads/sales to your pages and websites while you are focusing on other things with your business. Social media management helped me to gain more followers and customers. 90% of my customers come from my advertising (people I do not know). The other 10% is from family and friends that I do know. If you do not know how to work social media and running ads, I highly advise hiring a social media manager to run your pages if you have a busy life and want someone familiar with the social media platforms to help gain you customers, clients, followers, leads, and sales.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

The best source of gaining clients for me has been of course social media. My business launched during the pandemic. I didn’t go out into my community promoting my business but instead used social media to reach people since everyone was mostly at home and social distancing. My business was the perfect idea to those wanting to stay home and have a party/event brought to them. Once I learned social media management, I started to gain a following and also my 90% customers. Facebook and Instagram helped me to reach new customers and now I’m starting to use TikTok as another option. These same customers became repeat customers and also referrals to others that have booked with me. I’ve been able to reach and get booked by churches, schools and local businesses as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ThePartyPopperzCo.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepartypopperzco
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thepartypopperzco
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thepartypopperzco