This Balloon-Popping Tool Strikes Helium Gold

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

All right, all right, very excited about this story. We're gonna call it the balloon popping tool strikes helium gold. Welcome to Cytosool School. My name's Chris Guillebeau. In this story, in fact, a graphic designer strikes it big with his balloon popping product.

That's what it is, that's what it does. As you're gonna hear, it's actually a big problem, or a big challenge at least to go around and pop hundreds of balloons after a big convention or ballroom event or whatever the case may be whenever you need hundreds of balloons. So talk about solving a need, right? Solving a problem, providing a solution. It sounds wild, but it really is this classic case of here is this difficult challenge.

Here is a really simple solution. And of course this creative solution happens to be for sale. Now I just called it a creative solution, but really it's just as helpful as it is creative. And in fact, it's probably better to do something helpful than it is to do something creative, right? Because you can have a helpful, boring product that sells well.

You can have a creative, awesome, interesting product that nobody wants. So lots of lessons here. Again, the balloon popping tool strikes helium gold. I'll bring it to you after this quick message from our sponsor. [Music]

Sam Jossi did not intend to work in the balloon business.

You could say he just floated into it. After training as a graphic designer for his first real job, he was hired by a balloon company. Now the thing is, there are a lot of graphic designing jobs in the balloon world. Fun fact, when Sam got hired, the company already had 22 full-time designers on staff and they always had something to do. Side note, you might wonder what company this is because I did.

I went and looked it up, it is the Pioneer Balloon Company. Now the design department worked on the balloons themselves. Also the packaging for the balloons, the cataloging for the balloons, the images in the balloon magazines, those are a thing, and balloon advertisements. Now if Sam had stayed in that part of the job, his hot idea may have never taken flight. What changed was that his employer stopped making as many printed materials.

Fewer print jobs meant fewer design tasks for Sam. Instead, the balloon company executives needed someone to take photos. Sam soon started doing all the photography of everything for the company's catalogs, social media, balloon education courses, even week-long photo shoots. Before the pandemic, the company flew in professional balloon artists from all over the world and Sam was their photographer. When there were massive conventions for balloon decorators, Sam was there with his camera.

Listeners, that's when he noticed something. After the conventions, or the big photo shoots, people left the balloons behind with the rest of the trash. Some balloons deflated on the ground, others soared off into the sky, destined to wreak environmental havoc elsewhere. But one way or another, anything left behind had to be collected and thrown away. As part of the cleanup effort, most people in charge would go around popping balloons and they used whatever they could find, scissors, box cutters, and even a tool that looked like a medieval mace.

To make this tool, they attached a piece of putty to a wooden pencil or stick. Then on the other end was a sphere of small nails. While this caveman tool was effective, it was also extremely dangerous due to the sharp exposed nails. Just think "Game of Thrones," but with a bunch of balloons in a ballroom. Sam's idea was stratospheric.

All those event organizers charged with breaking down balloons could use a better, safer tool. He would make it and he would call it the striker. He just needed to put some air in this idea to get it off the ground. Designing the prototype required some different skills. After all, Sam had a degree in graphic design, not engineering.

But he didn't let this minor challenge deter him. Instead, he started working with Tinkercade, a 3D modeling program. Sam created rough designs, and then he had an engineer friend print them out with his 3D printer. After several versions, he settled on his prototype. By the summer of 2018, he had made 25 balloon strikers.

He took them along to the World Balloon Convention. It wasn't the gold rush of 1848, it was the striker rush of 2018. Before he knew it, Sam was out of inventory. Those 25 prototypes had sold like helium hotcakes. However, after the striker rush of 2018, things slowed down.

Life happened. Then 2020 came along with it, the pandemic, and Sam's company temporarily laid off everyone. For Sam, it was a blessing in disguise because he could now concentrate more fully on his invention. After buying his own 3D printer, redesigning the prototype twice, and going through a period of trial and error, he was ready for business. He created a website and made accounts with Facebook and Instagram.

Now throughout the process, Sam, who is a self-described perfectionist, realized done is better than perfect. He didn't need to spend thousands of dollars, and not everything had to be amazing. For example, he first envisioned fancy, colorful bubble mailers, and then he realized he just needed some way to ship his product. By early 2022, Sam had sold 1,000 strikers. He made a profit of $12,000 in his first full year, and sales continue to rise.

In fact, he sold to countries as far away as Tanzania. He's found that making strikers takes a lot of time. So next, he's looking to outsource the assembly and printing of the tool to someone who has 3D experience, and that way he can spend more time with his family. Or, he says, he might invent something else. [Music]

I enjoyed working on this story.

I hope you liked it as well. If you happen to be that person who wants to take over Sam's assembly and printing, go check it out. Go check out his website anyway, balloonstriker.bigcartel.com. I might recommend losing the subdomain there. If you can't get balloonstriker.com for whatever reason, maybe there's some other domain you could find, but definitely a very cool product.

As I said, pretty simple, very helpful, solves a problem, what's not to love? All right, that's it for today. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1977. We'll link up the striker, anything else I mentioned in the episode.

Also, you may have noticed that these days, a lot of things are more expensive, just because of the great resignation, the pandemic, all kinds of stuff. But balloons, in fact, do cost more today than they did a couple of years ago. And that's mostly because of inflation. All right, have a wonderful day. I hope you'll subscribe or follow.

Come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.