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Ziv:

Hello, concluding today. This is episode 14 with the DJ.

Voice over:

Take your balloons to the next level. As we delve deeper into what truly makes a professional balloon artist with your host Zivi Kivi. Now welcome to the balloon artists podcast.

Zivi:

What’s up city in today. I am so excited because this is the last season, the last episode of season eight. And I guess to interview someone that is actually very relevant and that is DJ DJ Morrow from Houston, Texas. Hey, DJ. What’s up?

DJ:

Hey, super happy to be here.

Zivi:

Let me paint the picture for the listener. So they know about you. You were living in Texas for the last eight years. You’ve been involved in twisting videography recently. Like seriously, recently you’ve decided to go heads like head on full throttle into the, you call it luxury balloon sculpting. Tell me a little bit about first of all, like why, why did you choose to change the direction from twisting and video coffee to.

DJ:

Well, I’ve been doing the, what I call the balloon sculptures for a long time. Almost since I started twisting balloons, it was always wanting to go bigger and more, elaborate and use more advanced techniques and make it more and more impressive.

DJ:

But I always did it as a hobby on the side from my regular twisting gigs, because I didn’t see where the market was, where I could find people who would pay for it. And that continued for a good seven years until I met this amazing guy, Stuart Maui. He did these giant balloon sculptures for this dentist office that I was twisting for. I’d gone to do like a five days a week twisting for the, for the kids waiting for the dentist. Great gig got to have lots of fun, be creative, cause not, it’s not so much lines. I get to spend more time with the kids. Anyways, he was doing these giant sculptures, basically what I hadn’t been dreaming of doing for the last basically ever since I started. And so I got with him and basically got his whole business philosophy, how he was doing it showed me sort of the kinds of people that are willing to pay for this kind of stuff and how you have to posture yourself and gave me the drive and the optimism that I needed to sort of cut ties and put my full effort behind the, uh, behind the dream of making giant balloons for people.

Zivi:

Well, this is really inspiring, especially when you take into consideration that you are 24 year old. I don’t mean to patronize or anything, but for 24 years old, like I remember when I was 24 year old, I couldn’t talk about balloons or anything with such clarity. And this is, uh, take my hat off DJ. And you’re like investing into your training. You’re going to float this year, uh, in, in the time of recording this just a few days before float. And I hope that, uh, you had learned a lot, uh, in Dell now that it’s live basically, but I want to kind of talk with you a little bit about what is deco twisting because some people get confused by the deco twisting. They think this is like an extension of anything related to balloons. So all the things that are they call and all the things that are twisting together or which is the equivalent of ballooned out, I think that’s a mistake.

Zivi:

That’s not what a term means. Twisting is all about decorating and within the realm of being a decorator, you can use twisting balloons in all sorts of ways. The simplest way would be just to embellish with a bit of twisting that can start with as simple as a flower or an occasional butterfly. That would be, I would call the like level one or a deco twisting and really like level that existed for years and not really anything new, the level that that is more recent and the place that you’re going into, if we are counting levels from, let’s say one to five is more in the area of five. Well, you build sculptures that have a focal point visually that are with a strong presence and that involves heavy usage of twisting skills, but the purpose is to decorate an event or a place or a business.

Zivi:

So the actual sculpture usually have some sort of function or artistic function of some sort that would be how I describe deco twisting. What do you think?

DJ:

I think that’s, that’s a pretty good summary of it right now. Most of my sculptures are basically using the twisting advanced twisting techniques and just scaling it up or just taking it a big step further. I’m really excited for going to float because I don’t have the experience with the stacking techniques, with the walls and with buildings, Spears, and using like quick links and stuff. That’s all very new to me. So in six months my sculptures might be using a lot more of those techniques, but like you said, it’s, it’s sort of having a, an artistic presence in the decoration of making it a really solidified sort of a piece.

Ziv:

This is really interesting because this is not just about like using different tools, like, um, more of the rounds of the links and bigger, bigger pieces on the overall it’s about causing the chance of using all of the brushes and all of the tools in order to create an impact that is decorative.

Ziv:

And in order to just build us some pieces with not limiting yourself to any balloon, unless you choose to be, to limit on purpose for mystical reasons. So stacking those rounds and those, and having the abilities to use Quick links and thinking alone, that’s actually something that you will really enjoy doing. I think it’s easier in some ways to start with a twisting balloons and then go around because you only have the math to figure that out in many ways, in many ways, but the hard part is the business. How do you sell balloon decor? Because if you come from the realm of entertainment and being at least then your mind works by the hour, like an entertainer and ballooned, Nico is sold by the value that you bring and not by the hour. So what’s your experience so far with selling balloons?

DJ:

It’s sort of me getting over my own difficulties with selling in general. Like I was never very good at the twisting business aspect of it. I was really lucky to sort of, uh, luck out on some regular gigs where the employer was doing a weekly or several times a week thing that they would pay me to twist for their customers. And that’s what I’ve been doing with several different companies for most of my twisting career. And I’ve tried to get better at the, the marketing aspect, the business aspect. It doesn’t come naturally to me. I really don’t like selling to people, which is a problem when you want to build a business. So basically the next six months to a year are going to be me refining my approach to selling refining the way that I posture the business and present the sculptures. So I still have a lot to learn on that front, but hopefully float is going to be a good way to pick up on different people’s approaches to the business.

DJ:

And I’m looking at more online courses as well. I know balloon artists college has tons of relevant courses in that regard.

Ziv:

I really liked the fact that you’re investing in yourself in education and also acknowledging that it is a process. It’s not something that you learn as fast as like doing another trample twist or manage twist or whatnot. It’s more of, um, of skills to know how to sell and to be confident around it. And it also kind of like playing the piano, playing an instrument, you need to practice it. You need to put in the time. And even when you do put in the time, obviously there will be difference between a pianist that played for a full month, every single day. And the piano is displayed for five years. It’s such a different feeling of if I’m looking to do something with balloons, I’ve got the experience and the ability to learn quickly.

DJ:

So where if I put my mind to something or I visualize something in my mind, give me a couple hours and a bunch of balloons and I can knock it out of the park every time. Whereas moving from that to suddenly, you’re trying to do this whole different endeavor where chances are, you’re going to fail and fail before you succeed. And it’s a whole different feeling of being like, no matter how much effort I put into it this one time, it’s not necessarily going to work out until I get better and better through practice.

Ziv:

Well, you’re working on your skills first and that’s the foundation of your ability to provide value for your customers. And you’re also in the right mindset in terms of educating yourself and mapping the skills that you need to walk on. I do have, um, uh, all sorts of marketing assets, like images that you’ve collected and they could website for that too, to show your luxury balloons, sculpting skills.

DJ:

Yeah. Building a website was really important to me before getting started so that I could use basically the idea is to let the websites sell for you. Like I can peak people’s interest, but my way of thinking is if the website’s working right, I got to get them interested. And then once they’re on the website that should do the rest of the work for me.

Ziv:

Did you update your website toward your journey into deco? Twisting?

DJ:

I basically built it from the ground up with that in mind, I had a website, but it was kind of neglected before and I wasn’t really getting any business from it. It was mostly word of mouth with my twisting gigs. And so this, this website’s sole purpose really is to promote the deco twisting. It’s really the hardest part of our job is as people who do things that no one else has done before, right?

DJ:

Whether it be large balloon sculptures or just any sort of innovation in deco twisting when people think of and hear balloons to thinking of, you know, swords and flowers, not even good balloons, they’re thinking of the most mediocre stuff. Or if you say a balloon arch or balloon column, they’re going to think of the simplest sort of two colors, balloon arch. And so as long as you can get those pictures in front of them, that’s when they realize how much they’re missing in terms of their own concept about what balloons can be

Ziv:
Recently, David Mahoney, who is a decorator, but he’s, he does a lot of begging project and a lot of, uh, sculpting. And even though he doesn’t really use twisting like deco twisting per se, or at least not often, he’s very talented as a sculpture and a very good business person. So he shared of like how he has a marketing pack.

That includes a very good looking envelope that has his logo on it. And a couple of balloon decor menus, you know, the type of balloon tickle menus that, um, Rachel Porter designs and that you can find on balloon art, clip, art.com. And he shared a couple of those inside just to give the customer the potential customer, some ideas. And he has a nice letter. What is known as a cover letter with long form copy. So a full letter, full a full page with a lot of information about what balloon deco can do for you and what are some of the things that they do for customers and a few business cards and a few candies. And he goes with this marketing back into, for example, golf clubs, I think in Texas, I think that’s where he’s located. And he gets people to, to learn about his brand professionally face-to-face through meetings.

Ziv:

And it’s, it’s wonderful how we are living in 2020. And in order to sell balloon the comb, it’s still the most efficient, productive way to be proactive, to be literally proactive, to go out there with a nice marketing pack and to present it to people. Is that something you’ve been experimenting with, like being blocked, even going out there?

DJ:
Yeah. I have been going to different businesses and, uh, either like if I, if I make a big sculpture, I like to just think about someone who I would want to get to know as a client and just bring it to them as a gift and sort of introduce myself that way without any strings attached. That’s a really, that’s something that I’ve been trying to also utilize. And I’ve been thinking about putting together something that you’ve described like that, where it’s a, a letter mixed with sort of a portfolio, plus just a little gift package.

DJ:

That’s been something that I’ve been wanting to put together soon. That’s going to be on my agenda.

Zivi:

I think it’s a, it’s a high priority. I want to, first of all, say DJ, that your work is actually like, you’re highly skilled with what you do. And I would ask you kindly to send me a couple of your work. Can’t work like a couple of things that you’re proud of. We’ll put that in balloonartistspodcast.com is the inspiration for people, especially because like a year from now, we might touch base with you again and ask you for another couple of photos.

Ziv:

I know it will be a good start. And then it will be an impressive journey just by watching what you do recently. I can tell that, but I want to also gift you and empower you and our listeners. If you, if you think that you can do, if you choose to go all in and fearlessly, invest time and even money and go into balloon into balloon, they call it specifically into debt that could wasting. So my first step would be, you know, there’s a lot of free resources out there, but some of them are better and working with the better, like I wouldn’t go to any library and just pick up any book. Right. I would prefer a book that I like in the book because it will bring me most value. And they say like your average of the five people around you, most of the time in terms of like just the, the quality and the success.

Ziv:

So it goes the same way with content. If you are constantly surrounding yourself with, let’s say, sorry, for the word, but like content, then what can I say? This can actually slow you down instead of making you a poll guys with that said, there’s a season in Balloon artist  podcast about Balloon decor, which helps you. You get into the mindset of what is the core and how cool people think and not less important is a season that is free in blue artists podcast, which is season five. The marketing season that season will give you the infrastructure on how to do marketing of your basically new service and how to gain the confidence around that. If that is not enough, there is one more free resource that I want you to, to consider DJ. And you guys listening and deciding to go to balloon décor.

Ziv:

And that is if you go to Google, the Zivi KiVi gift, just Google it Zivi Kivi gift. What you’ll find is a course on negotiation and failing, which specifically for, for balloon decor, for starting any new service, it’s really important to have those skills. Otherwise you will. I still sell food. And in that full good, I don’t mind if you do free. I don’t mind if you do on purpose. I just want you to have the skills to also get what you deserve because balloon the call and Decker twisting there’s more money in down, period. There’s more money in doing that for people they pay for balloon for the call, more than they pay for a few hours of entertainer. I know that I’m a little bit generalizing here and, you know, you might find a specific gig where you get paid specifically more and you might find balloon decorators that have a kinda like, uh, like a pool mentality, poverty mentality, where they will just charge so little that they can’t make any money, right.

Zivi:

Especially because they don’t know how to price. So I would say, do that focus on yourself techniques. And then the next step from there would be to go into the realm of bank for education stuff. Like the balloon stockup the balloon has a job cost feature. So it costs $1 to get the app and $1 to get the job cost form feature, but that’s two bucks for life and you would be surprised, but if you check your twisting sculptures and put them into, I know sometimes it’s hard. You need to count a lot of balloons, but do it, do it. And then if you put that into the job cost form and putting all the time and all the parameters that you need for job costing, then you will have a nice initial price point for the minimal amount of money that you to charge for a decor piece.

Ziv:

So that would be a, another resource I recommend. And then the next step up a notch would be to follow a kale portal and take her pricing class. Her pricing class is going to be available soon. So follow up on messages about that in the Facebook will balloon artists go and join the group. We will make an announcement about, I think last again, even though it’s a passing class for decorators, traditionally, they could waste our decorators in terms of the value that they bring and in terms of the pool of the opportunity to make more money. So the pricing class is really valuable. And then at the top of the pyramid, in my humble opinion is to join balloon artist college, where we have so many twisting classes and film, any deco, deco, twisting classes, and so many corporate classes, and also business classes at the point of the coding of this episode, when you join college, when you joined the club, you basically get access to 55 courses, 55 courses, the value is over 2,500 bucks.

Ziv:

And you get you like, even if you’ll do a course every week, which you can’t, because it’s too much content, you will, you know, you will not finish it in a year. We are constantly adding more value to it. And it comes with challenges like eight challenges that you’ve formed, the tasks that can increase your skills specifically, that aren’t blinking the balloons. We have a few really good courses about linking balloons that can build your skills and that the suffering you need and all the challenges and the ongoing development with webinars is just yummy. It’s just like fiercely investing into your professional development. So that would be the overall recommendations for going into balloon decor, DJ, any final words, where can people learn more about you?

DJ:

Well, my balloon artist website is balloonsinbold.com. You can find me on Facebook at balloonsinbold or on Instagram as well.

Ziv:

I’m going to be putting up a website soon enough that focuses more on my artistic side of balloons because I’m, I’m an artist first and foremost. And so moving into starting my own business, why I’m, I’m humbled and grateful at all of the amazing people like you and all the other people on the balloon, artists, Facebook group, the balloon friends, Facebook group, people that are really, uh, putting out a lot of these resources for the less business. Business-minded less capable salesmen like myself, who just dream of making art and balloons all day. But, uh, yeah, I’m, I’m going to be focusing on a lot of art on the side, sort of splitting, splitting my efforts there. I look forward to getting more of that, but in terms of the balloon sculptures yeah. Balloons in bold.com. Wonderful. And, uh, we’ll put a link for that in balloonsinbold.com.

Ziv:

So if you go to the you’ll find or the last episode of season eight, you’ll find that. And, uh, DJ, thank you so much for being in this season. And I am so happy to announce that the next season will be focused on balloon decor specifically on deco twisting. And so this is a very nice segue. People can get a head start in all of these start considering and be inspired by, by you really puts in the work to get there and understand that this will not happen by itself. You need to actually work and effort. And I am looking forward to featuring your photos in the Facebook group and on our show notes. So guys, thank you so much for listening for this last episode of season eight and see you after the break in the next season of balloon artists to podcast. Bye-bye goodbye, everybody.

Ziv:

Hello, balloon artist, podcast, nation, what’s up, Zivi Kivi here. And I am super excited to share with you this moment, which is the deep section of season eight, episode 14. This is the last episode of the season, the season in which we’ve met the veterans. We met people that are experiencing all sorts of levels that are doing balloons for passionately for many, many years. And in the tip section, I tried to share with you a little bit for my world as a business coach and a life coach as to someone that is very passionate about the balloons and the [inaudible] college, I’ve been sharing with you stories and those always, uh, stories that, uh, basically tools they can help you overcome all sorts of situations. And I hope that you get to use those stories just as efficiently as you’re using your two 60 pump or your one 60 pounds or your, uh, DAPL staffer.

Ziv:

And the season started with a little bit of a turmoil in which I was concerned about, uh, someone that was bad laughing, uh, both the balloon artist college, me personally, with all sorts of, of lies. And I was concerned that this might affect anything actually ended up the best year ever in 2019. And I’m so dedicated to serving you in 2020 in all sorts of surprising ways. And dystonia of today is actually about optimizing. And I’ve been contacted by one of the people that I’m coaching. And he showed me a flyer and he said, can you make one of these for my business? And because we do have full graphic designers in balloon artist college, helping people that are students helping people that I coach, I said, yes, of course we can do that. Well, we worked on the copy or the text that comes inside the flyer.

Ziv:

And we walked on the visuals, which has the pictures that it appeal in the flyer. And by the time we were done, the flyer was amazing. It was just stunning. And when I looked into the source, the inspiration, I could see that the flyer was better. And in fact, even the flyer itself, that was the inspiration. It was way better than any other flyer I ever. So it was a unicorn in the field of flyers. I was very ecstatic and excited, as you can imagine, when I saw the flyer, both the, both of them, actually both the flyer that my team created, which was stunning and the original one, which was, uh, head and shoulders above the rest, because I thought that flyers can’t walk, or I thought flyers can walk if you take them to a meeting in certain way, and also do other things in that marketing pack. But that flyer was like, it was so optimized. And so pleating, and the copy was so well conceived that it actually has the power to generate an income of thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. I’m talking about a lot of money.

Ziv:

And that inspired me to open up my eyes to remember that the details matter every single detail matter. And at the same time, let’s not fall into the trap of perfectionism. Let’s remember that doing things that are great and awesome and amazing is good enough. It doesn’t have to be perfect. And this is what we’d like to do me personally, with Ballou Northeast college and all of our students, they notice intuitively they notice, they know that they want to improve, that they want to get to the next level. And I know that there’s that ease the next level to get to as a college, we will give you more exclusive material and more free stuff too. A couple of days ago, we brainstormed in the meeting, uh, about how, what might look, what might the next course, the next fleek course look like, oh, it costs for $1.

Ziv:

What would that look like if we wanted to make it amazing? I thought like, Hey, let’s do a course that teaches you how to make 2000 bucks from balloons. And it doesn’t matter if it’s your first 2000 bucks, your second 2000 bucks, or just, if you need 2000 bucks, it costs that takes you by the hand and helps you make 2000 bucks. Wouldn’t that be a cool course? If you like the idea and you like what we’re doing the best way to support back to support us with all that we do is to join balloon artist college as a member. The way to do that is go to pollute@thiscollege.com and then follow up on how to join through that website. When you join to blue, that is college.com through our club. You basically pay every single month and support us every single month in everything we do. We do a lot to help this industry go, and we appreciate every single one of you for listening right now. Thank you for that. A season, season eight, a life-changing season in many ways. And thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. And they do hope I would see, I could see you soon inside college bye-bye and see you in season nine of balloon podcasts.