How a Party Side Hustle Became a Six-Figure Brand

0:00We always, always, always try and value customer service and the customer experience. And I always say, I think we're very good at balloons, but I'm not actually trying to be the best balloon artist in the world. I'm trying to give you the best balloon experience. Welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and scaling a business. I'm your host, Serena Smith. Today's guest is the founder of Bashify, an event planning and balloon installation company with a client base ranging from everyday party hosts to Fortune 500 companies to even the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. Since launching in 2020, Bashify has grown nearly a thousand percent.

0:31Basically, I want a reimagined, better version of Party City. Founder Brie Gillio joins me now to share how her vision for Bashify is blowing up in the best ways possible. Brie, thanks for being here. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. So excited to have you and fascinated by your journey because you were an ICU nurse before starting this company, correct? Yes. I mean, that is quite the 180-degree career shift. What inspired you to make the transition? Yeah. So I was a picky nurse during COVID, which obviously was just a very difficult time. And I was actually getting married to my now husband.

1:15So we were engaged and going through the whole wedding planning process. And I really enjoyed planning our wedding. And we were actually on our honeymoon down in California. We were actually supposed to do this big honeymoon over in like Paris and go to Europe and do all this stuff. But if we did that, I don't think Bashify would have started. So I'm happy everything got changed. But we ended up going and honeymooning down in California. And down in California, we did this little beachside picnic. And I don't know what it was. I looked at my husband, though. I kid you not. And I said, I think I'm going to start this up in Washington because that's where we were in Seattle, Washington.

1:51And I don't know if it was just like the honeymoon bliss or what it was. And he was just like, yeah, go for it. Quit your job. Go do it. And so that's really what started it was we just started doing these like little two to four person like pop up picnics. I had been talking about wanting a little bit of like a step back or a break from some bedside nursing. I also had some like medical stuff with my back. And bedside nursing is like very laborious and puts a lot of strain and tension on your back. And so I just kind of wanted to step away, but I had no intention of ever leaving the nursing fields.

2:22I honestly just wanted like a creative outlet and thought it would just be like a fun hobby. And then now here we are today. Wow. Okay. So you were not envisioning it becoming your full-time gig. Best laid plans. No, never. Now, of course, it's not just you, but it's your husband. It's a few full-time employees. Things have grown in remarkable ways, which we'll dig into. But at what point did you start to see the writing on the wall that this might be bigger than you had originally anticipated? You know, I'll be so honest. I think my head was just kind of down working and I don't even think there was a point.

2:58There was kind of a big transition because we were from Seattle, but now we're in Dallas. And about a year, maybe a year and a half into business, we had our daughter. So I got pregnant a few months into business, about a year and a half in, she was born. And we kind of had this moment of we either need to move because the party industry in Seattle was just not well established at that point. And so we decided we either need to shut the business down. My husband can focus on tech because that's his background and kind of stay here in the Seattle area because Seattle is great for tech. Or we can move and we can really like push this party thing.

3:32So it was kind of go big or go home and kind of went back and forth with it for a little bit. And finally, I just looked at him and I said, I think we can do it. that was really a big defining moment where we were going to be selling our home, moving our family because we had our daughter at that point. And that was kind of the moment that I was like, okay, well, I guess if I'm doing all this, it's definitely not a hobby. Wow. Okay. That's a lot. That's a lot of change. That's a big decision to be making. Why Dallas specifically? So we had looked at our followers on Instagram and we're like, okay, where are they located?

4:02Because that's going to give us a good idea of kind of like the party industry. We only had like 2000 followers. So it was honestly a very small portion that we were looking at. But LA was kind of the big one in the surrounding areas, San Diego, kind of all that general area. And then Dallas, Houston, Austin, Nashville, Miami, those were like kind of some of the top ones. And then we just kind of went through and then we're like, okay, then like personally for our family, what are like yes and no's for these different places? And California, love it, but we were like, it's just a little too expensive right now.

4:29And then Florida, we were like, oh, we don't really want like the humidity. So there was some personal stuff in these different ones. And then we really narrowed it down to Dallas and Austin. And then we'd been to Austin before, really liked it, but we'd never been to Dallas. And so actually we booked a flight and we were then on a plane within maybe 36 hours and went to visit Dallas. And we said, if we like the trip, then this is where we're going to move. Wow. Okay. We do love a fancy party in LA, but it is expensive here. I understand why it's maybe not. It is expensive. I know. I know. Maybe not the ideal market, especially with one and now two kids.

5:05Okay, so how then did your business transition building it in Seattle versus building it in Dallas? So when we were in Seattle, we were talking about how we were doing these like pop-up picnics. And there's a million reasons as to why we ran into issues with them. But that was really our step into the industry. I actually never wanted to do it long term. I think they're just really hard to scale. And there's a bunch of reasons, but that felt like the easiest thing to kind of get into. So then when we moved to Dallas, we actually stopped offering the picnics. And so we only offered some more large-scale events, event planning, trying to get just into more high-ticket, high-budget type things, but we didn't have any clients here.

5:45And so we ended up meeting someone who used to work actually at a balloon business. And it was so funny because I vowed to never do balloons. Not because I didn't like them or anything like that. I was just like, they're so overwhelming to me. There was a million ordering things. And I was just like, I'm just someone who's like, if I'm overwhelmed by it, like, I'm not going to do it because I want to do it like really well. It felt like something I couldn't. And so when we met this person who had some of the industry knowledge, she pitched to work with us and was like, hey, I'd love to teach you guys how to do balloons.

6:14I'd love to work under you. Look, I like the balloons, but I don't want to run a business. And that's kind of how we started learning. And then we just put out on social media that we started doing balloons. We got connected with some venues and different vendors in the area. and started putting out our balloon work and people really liked it. And it definitely took time to really take off. But we saw a lot of interest in that versus only doing like the event planning side, which now we do. But that was our step into it. Because having someone pay$500 for balloons is a lot easier to find versus someone spending thousands of dollars for someone to like put together their events.

6:47So we basically restarted when we moved here in 2022. And then again, like our business did a total, a total 180. This is really fascinating. You were so committed to not doing balloons, and now Bashify is far away best known for these stunning balloon installations, right? So from a mental perspective, how did you allow yourself to get to the place of saying, okay, I can commit to this? Or were there some misconceptions that maybe you had about balloons that turned out to not be true? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, it wasn't that I didn't like the idea of balloons. Like in Seattle, we had worked with balloon artists.

7:29Like I loved when clients did them. I was just more of like, I have no idea how to put those together. And I just don't feel like I have the capacity to learn. That was a lot of it. And so when the person that we met who came in with more of that industry knowledge, and I think that once I felt like I had almost like a teacher or just like someone in the space who understood it more, I was like, okay, they can break it down. I can understand it. I also really got my husband on board with it because there was some of the ordering stuff that I was just like, I'm not a tech person. Like that is just so far outside of my realm.

8:00And then when he got a handle on it from like the ordering perspective and kind of took that off my plate and I was able to fully focus on the creative of the balloons, I was like, oh, I really like this. And I'm actually like really good at it. I think it's one of those really incredible parts of the founder's journey in that I think for almost everyone you get in for one reason and you're like, oh, I'm good at this thing or I've got this great idea. And then there's all this other stuff that I don't really want to deal with. And then somewhere along the way, you recognize that you actually have these other hidden skill sets that you didn't think that you had, which I think is just great for character building and confidence generally.

8:39Yes, absolutely. On the flip side, you know, being a founder means wearing a great many hats, not all of which you want to wear, what were the things that you found most challenging in those early years of running the company? That's a great question. I think that where we had struggled when we were first starting was just you truly have to be every aspect of your business. And so I had my husband help with some of the more like tech computer things that my brain is truly not programmed for. It's not even something that I feel like I can learn. But I think the biggest thing was trying to balance between posting on social media and then getting back to clients.

9:23And then you want to, like, make your, you know, website better. And if anything, I'm someone who I have honestly like 100 ideas at every point and moment. And the biggest thing was having to decide which ones do we focus on versus which ones are going to be okay, like, setting aside for now. And that's kind of a goal for when we get bigger. and on one hand it's like well I didn't really think that it was going to be my full-time job it was kind of a hobby but also I took it very seriously from the stance that I wanted a super professional website I wanted designers I wanted all the different things to feel very legitimate and so it was great because I was able to learn a lot of the different skills from being so many different aspects of the business like customer service and graphic design and all the million different things but it was really hard um kind of like time managing all of that and figuring out What do you put more effort into?

10:09How do you help grow? But it's like, if all I'm doing is posting on social media, I can have all these viral posts that blow up. But then if like our customer service is not so great, that's going to turn people off to the business. So it's like, how do you grow your business up, but also create like a wide base so that it can hold when you are expanding and growing? What have you found are some of those touch points that have proven to be the most impactful in terms of not just bringing customers in for the first time, but building that lifetime value and having them come back again and again?

10:43I think the biggest thing and one thing we always talk about, and whether it was just my husband and I are now with a team, but we always, always, always try and value customer service and the customer experience. And I always say, I think we're very good at balloons, but I'm not actually trying to be the best balloon artist in the world. I'm trying to give you the best balloon experience. And so there will be people who are better. And like I'm truly like not trying to compete with the people who are like your true sense of like an artist who is for your top 1 % of people. Because end of the day, like people remember how you make them feel.

11:13And so whether you're spending$50 with us or you're spending$5 ,000 with us, our hope and our goal is to always make you feel supported within those two different products and aspects of which you're coming in with. And I think that's been a big thing because we have a really, really high return customer, especially on our e-commerce. on our services too, but that's just going to not be as often versus we have a really, really strong customer base of e-commerce, which has also really helped us because then those people are the ones who are going to go and refer us to friends and family. And so even if we take a little bit of a scale back from like promoting on social media, actually our e-commerce numbers can stay very solid because I think that we've built a really good foundation of people who like to purchase from us.

11:53How much of your revenue mix at this point is your e-com? Right now e-com is about 40%. Hmm. And when did you make the transition to just being from fully in real life event production, which obviously is pretty difficult to scale? There's labor involved. There's a lot of overhead. There's storage. There's, there's to some degree, there's a cap on how much you can do. Whereas e-com can in many ways feel sort of infinite. When did you have that light bulb moment? So from when actually we first started, my husband was always big of like, we got to go e-com, we got to go e-com. Like, we always say, like, if it was up to him, we'd only have an e-com business.

12:33But if it was up to me, we'd only have a service business. But like, in reality, it's the enmeshment of the two that is really what's cool. And so we technically started e-com back in Seattle back in 2021. The product that we started with, though, it's completely changed. We didn't sell like just the DIY balloon kits, which is our main e-com product now. Now, when we moved here to Dallas and we launched that we were going to be doing balloon installations, we launched the kits like the same week. Got it. Okay. I, you know, your husband says that he would love for it to only be an e-com business.

13:05But then the first thing that popped in my head was like, then what would you post about on social media, you know, if you weren't doing these balloon installations all the time? Exactly. Thank you. See, you get it. You get it. You got to feed that content machine. I want to talk about your social media because it's pretty remarkable. I mean, Bashify's Instagram account has more than 100 ,000 followers. Your personal Instagram account has 160 ,000 followers. Your husband's got another 40K. You have really amassed a pretty sizable following across all of your accounts. I think it's the million-dollar question that every early-stage founder wants the answer to.

13:45Like, what is your strategy? To what extent did you have a strategy going in? Or were you just throwing things at the wall and seeing what stuck? And, you know, now five years in, what are your best practices? Yeah. Did I have a strategy? That's a great question. I mean, I kind of have a strategy. I feel like because I've been in social media for so long, there will be times where I go outside very much of like the traditional strategy because I'm just like, I know this is going to work. So it feels wrong to say like, I go off vibes because that feels like it takes away from some of the work and things in which I have done.

14:21But to an extent, there will be things where I'm just like, oh, I know this is going to like make sense. But I think that just comes from time in the industry. But I always remember that people want to buy things from people. And so especially when you're competing with an Amazon or a Walmart or a Target, it's like I can't compete in plenty of aspects, but I can compete when it comes down to feeling like you're buying from me and you're buying from like a small business, a family. versus a big corporation. And so one thing I always try and do, and I'm still working at it and getting better at it, but I really try and bring customers and viewers through the experience.

14:54And so whether that's like through an install, and I really try and I talk to the camera and I'll be like, this is what we're doing today. And I give people all like the back end of it. And I'll say like, we're doing this amount of fetal balloons. We charge this amount of feet for the balloons. Like I tell people how much the installs cost. Like that's not a secret. it. I have zero issue doing that. I'll tell them when we mess up, I'll be like, we totally messed this thing up, or this happened, or, you know, this client wasn't happy about this. And so I really try and take everyone through the ups and downs.

15:21I'm going to show them, I'm going to also talk through my own thinking process of, hey, this thing happened. And at first, I'll be honest, I was kind of annoyed by it. But then I took a step back and I realized this. And I think taking people through that helps people see there's a person behind this. And I think that has been really helpful. I also break up between what I post on Bashify versus what I post on my personal page. So when I post on Bashify, it's a little bit more buttoned up and that's intentional. So it's not going to be as like opinionated. You want to see a catalog of our work, go to Bashify.

15:53Then if you come to my page, that's where there's a little bit more opinion, a little bit more personality, a little bit more spunk. When I'm really thinking about it, I also think very much of breaking it out into those two sections. So it's like even when I'm doing a trend, Is this a trend that people who are just overall business owners moms are going to like that's going to go a little bit more on like my own personal page versus this a highly balloon specific thing that's going to go on bashify's page and I think also differing those out also helps curate a little bit more of like what people want to watch if someone's like I don't care about this founder I don't care about her personal life in any way just want to see balloons go follow bashify you're gonna get tons of content in the same way there's some people who are like I don't really care that much about balloons I may buy kit every once in a while but I don't really want my feed filled with that, then go follow me because you'll get a lot of other things while you are like watching that type of content.

16:40You do have a clear sense of separation. And you know, you were saying like, you don't want to say that you're just going off of vibes, but I think it almost belies what is actually going on underneath that, which is that like you have done enough of this and you have developed enough of a skill set and you have enough past experience that it's almost like it feels intuitive, but it's actually really based on you having taken in a lot of data so that now at this point, it's just second nature. I guess the other thing we do too is like on both accounts, I try and talk to our audience a lot. And so I'll do like question boxes and I'm always in DMs, like trying to respond to people.

17:20And if anything, like I make that a very conscious effort and I'm trying to do that even more now because I want to understand what does this audience want? What are they looking for when they're coming to Bashify? And I think that's really helpful. And I think people feel, again, like they're part of the journey. And that's the goal for all of my content across the board. It's like I want to bring people along and feel like they're a part of it, whether they purchase or not. You guys are very explicit in terms of your cost and profit, which I think is incredibly valuable to other fledgling business owners and founders.

17:53Have you ever gotten any pushback from the client side when you're revealing what would often not be revealed on an invoice or a budget that you're sending to someone. I mean, you're laying it all out there. We are very intentional with the projects in which we share those things on. And there are some people who will be like, hey, we're like more private or hey, I know you like normally film your setups. Could you not for this one? And we're like, yeah, absolutely. So people like that. I'm then not going to go and share what it costs. And actually majority of the time when I'm sharing, I try and keep it more corporate focused just because I know that it can feel uncomfortable as an individual because it's like, yeah, you don't really want like your personal party guests to know what you're like dropping on this event.

18:38But also I think on the flip side of it, especially nowadays with like influencer culture and whatnot, like people are always sharing items. Like you can go and see how much things cost. It kind of is what it is. I mean, one day do I think like I'll mess up and accidentally share one that didn't want to get shared? Maybe, but like that hasn't happened. And I just try and be like really intentional about it. Right. We're not really in the days of privacy anymore. Exactly. Sort of relatedly, you and your husband both work for the company. You do this together. You're both posting on your own social media accounts and you're heavily featured on the Bashify account.

19:18How much of your time are you spending making content? Like how big of your role at Bashify is this? And, you know, how do you too, because you're also partners in your personal life, how do you too create any sense of boundaries in terms of A, like what is, what's kosher and what's not to, to be posting, but also just making sure that there's some sense of balance that you don't always have like cameras in each other's faces? Yeah, that's a great question. I would say my main job at Bashify at this point is content. Because I do all of our marketing, we do a little bit of paid marketing, but in the whole scheme of things, we really are not doing that much because I can put a lot of that, frankly, like on my back and shoulders.

20:04And I don't mind because like I do genuinely enjoy that. And so I will say I'm not necessarily going in like inflating a ton of balloons. I do a lot of installing, but I'm also installing to create content around that. So generally speaking, if I am working, I'm filming it. That's just kind of what it comes down to. And so when it comes to the amount of hours I'm putting in, it's kind of hard because I'll very much just put my phone up for 40 minutes while I'm inflating, and then I'm going to use that to do a voiceover. So it's very much overlapped with the work that I'm actually doing. but I would say it's a full-time job because I'm very much filming like hours during the day during work and then generally speaking I kind of break my work day up into two so I'll do four to five hours during the day and then at night I'll do another two to three hours of all the editing from the content that I filmed during the day.

20:55Can you tell me why you break up your day like that? It's just a total personal thing because we have kids I think that also changes it a little bit is because during the day our kids are in school so I'm like I need to get everything filmed as much as possible because I want to make sure that when our kids are home with us, we're with our kids. We're not really on our phones. We don't show our kids really online, not their faces. They'll kind of be in like the background and stuff or whatever. But I really don't want them to be content. So during the workday, I'm kind of going to be filming all that.

21:24But I always know that because they're still pretty little, they're going to go to bed by seven, eight o 'clock. So that I still have hours and I'm a night owl too. Like I'm always staying up late. So I would way rather just, you know, get cozy on the couch after my kids go to bed and then I can edit. I usually can bulk edit like two, three, four videos then at the end of the night and then I can post them. Like normally I'm posting at like 10 o 'clock at night. Oh, and then the question about boundaries, like my own husband's with creating that. We're always working on boundaries. We're always working on taking a step back, work-life balance, all that good stuff.

21:56One thing that we try and do is we say once our kids are home, which generally we'll pick them up from school and be home between like 5 and 5 30 from that time to when they go to bed our general rule of thumb is like no work talk unless it's necessary and like maybe our team's out like doing a job and we need to check in but we try and create that time with our kids and like our family time to be very special to us so we're not editing we're not filming the majority of the time yeah we try and keep that separate and that's been extremely helpful and then also too is when my husband and I will go out there'll be some date nights that we say hey we're going out because we're invited into this event.

22:29We're going to film for it. This is a work night. And then we have plenty of date nights that we don't film, we don't show, because that's going to be time for us. So I think a lot of it is also just communicating that beforehand and knowing the expectation going in. Super important. There's also the reality of the fact that you had one kid, you now have two. Your husband had a very stable sounding career as a software engineer, and yet he made the decision to leave to go all in on a balloon and events company. Those stakes are high, and that is putting your family in a position with virtually no safety net, right?

23:09So can you take me through the decision-making process and how you guys realized that it was worth it? Yeah, it's terrifying not having a safety net, just to be so honest. Yeah, so he was a software engineer. He worked for Microsoft, Google, and then Block, which owns like Square. So yeah, we said we wanted him to work corporate as long as possible. So it was just like, we're going to keep pushing and he'll very much do his corporate job and then help on weekends and nights and all that type of stuff. And it truly just got to the point where it was either he's going to not be fulfilling his role at Bashify and we're going to lose customers or not get jobs or whatnot, or he's going to not be producing at work and he'll get in trouble there, right?

23:52One thing too, I will say though, is because we create content, and this wasn't necessarily intentional, it just kind of happens. But because we create content, we do have that as like a source of income because we'll do brand deals and things like that. So honestly, previous to him leaving corporate, we were doing influencer work, brand deals, corporate job, and Bashify. So we really had three jobs. And that was very, very hectic. And it was one of those things where it was like, we know that something has to change at some point. And the goal was always for it to be his corporate job. So when we took that step away, actually, a lot of it was just making sure that the money that we were making with influencing could very much support our lives.