Many balloon professionals suffer from an “identity crisis” when it comes to how they are perceived. Are they an artist or are they a business? There is no wrong answer to this, just positives and negatives associated with both. During this panel, two working professionals who identify as artists and two who identify as businesses will discuss their approach to this subject as well as how they try to walk the line between the two.

Nowadays it seems like every single product out there has been enhanced through artificial intelligence, so why not your business. Through this panel, you’ll chat with industry professionals who have come to rely on AI as a way to make their lives easier and expand on their brands.

It’s simply not possible for every single person in this world to be your customer, so you have to make choices with your marketing budget to know where to best spend it. That means you have to know who your target audience actually is. On this panel, industry experts will discuss how they have chosen their demographics when it comes to their clients and how these choices have led to both improvements as well as some negative side effects in their businesses.

No one reading this is getting younger, and one day after a long and successful career in your business, it will be time to hang it up and retire. But when you sometimes live day to day and check to check, how will that be possible? Industry experts join us for this panel to discuss things you can do to best prepare for that inevitable day when you’ve inflated your very last balloon.

In this day and age, sustainability and responsible practices have never been more important. During the course of this panel, experts from our industry will discuss ways they have adopted responsible practices into their businesses and will share ideas and ways you can address problematic people who challenge your very existence in this eco-friendly world.

When you are self employed, it’s VERY easy to get overwhelmed by everything involved in running your business, and that’s without family, kids, pets or even the hint of a social life. Many small business owners eventually give up when they find themselves drowning in work related drama. So how can you avoid this? In this panel, industry experts assist you in finding ways to achieve a work/life balance that makes you both happy AND successful.

Being an “army of one” means you wear a LOT of hats, and one day it just becomes too much. So how do you know when it’s time to bring on more help? How do you even go about the process? And what do you need to know when it’s time to say goodbye to someone who’s working for you? In this panel, industry experts from different working set-ups discuss how they deal with this issue on an almost daily basis.

There’s an old saying…there’s safety in numbers. Well, when it comes to balloons in the event business, there’s also profit in numbers! These panelists will discuss how they have developed relationships over the years with different event industry vendors that have benefitted their businesses as well as those they have partnered with, as well as short cuts for you to avoid some of the mistakes they made over the years.

Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, NextDoor, Alignable, LinkedIn, X, Threads…the list goes on and on and on…but which social media platform will be the best for your business? On this topic, experts will gather to discuss the plusses and minuses of their experiences and will share which platform works best for them and why.

No matter who we do business with we want to be treated well with respect and appreciation. But whether you realize it or not, simple little mistakes in your customer service approach can cost you dearly over the long term. During this panel, join our experts as they go over some of the biggest mistakes people make in their businesses and how you can overcome them.

In this panel, executives and leaders from some of the biggest balloon industry manufacturing companies will be joining us to discuss where we as an industry are. After the collapse of Qualatex, lots of people have questions about the fate and direction we all find ourselves in, and during this panel you’ll get answers straight from the people who make decisions when it comes to production, design, distribution and more.

They say that 50% of your marketing money is wasted…but you’ll never know which 50% it is until it happens. Well, for some of you, that’s why you don’t spend any and rely almost solely on “sweat equity marketing” in the forms of social media and the like. In this panel, experts will discuss the benefits as as well as challenges to paid marketing and how you can avoid some of the mistakes they have made when it comes to their money.