In June of 2000, I was working two jobs to make ends meet. My second job was making minimum wage and was not helping out much. One evening, my family and I were eating at CiCi's Pizza in Columbia, South Carolina. CiCi's was inexpensive and the only place we could afford to eat. A balloon artist named Marvin Norman was working there that evening. My wife suggested I could try making balloon animals for tips as an alternative to my second job. I doubted that I would be able to remember how to make all the animals, but I decided to talk to Marvin about it.

Marvin showed me how to make my first balloon dog that night. After this first experience, I borrowed a book from the local library to learn how to make other animals.

Soon after, I talked to a different CiCi's Pizza location that had no balloon artist. I convinced the manager to let me start working for tips there. When I began, I only knew how to make four balloon sculptures: a dog, a flower, a sword, and a heart (I cheated on this one - I used a heart shaped balloon)! Every night, I looked in books to figure out how to how to make the things the kids had asked for that day. I started buying every book I could find on the subject.

More than ten years later, I am making 19 foot tall balloon sculptures and still going strong!

That was an interesting read, nice to see how people got started in the business.