Today, I’m going to teach you 101 Bounce House Business Tips for new bounce house business owners.
There’s a lot to learn, so in this article I’m going to do my damndest to cover it. ALL.
101 Bounce House Business Tips for new bounce house business owner
Now that it’s late May, all of bounce house nation is in full swing, the insurance companies are backed up with new requests, Facebook Marketplace is full of goofy ass fisher price bounce houses for rent, and you need to get ready for summer because this is when the real businesses turn up, and losers businesses sell to companies to us!
So here we go, 101 Bounce House Business Tips for New Bounce House owners!
1. If you put a bounce house in your logo, the columns will look like a penis or condoms.
2. You don’t need damn bounce house in your logo. Or kids or water splashes. Build a logo that builds a brand. Think Nike, Starbucks, Mercedes, Toyota…
3. Get a website day 1. Inflatable Office is only $39 if you have under 10 units and is a website that’s made for you, inventory tracking, online booking, route building and MUCH MORE.
4. Google matters the most. Start working on SEO asap, and if you don’t know what that is, that’s where you start. Do ALL the research.
5. You’re a business owner now. “I don’t know how” or “I can’t figure it out” is NOT an option. The market doesn’t give a rip how “bad you are with computers” because guess what, they only shop at places that are on the internet.
6. Facebook marketplace will be your best friend in the beginning. Get all your units on there, make your posts the best picture on Marketplace, with the best description on there, and link out the the URL of the exact unit in the description, and push people to just hit the “is this available” button.
7. To win on marketplace you need good deals.
8. Your Facebook page is the only place that you can reach customers with posts. Spend at least 8 hours getting everything on there PERFECT when you start it. Post there daily.
9. Start an instagram, link it to the FB page, and ignore it after that. It’s for half naked girls and Ronaldo, not for renting doing bounce houses.
10. Buy from American based companies – Yes they are MADE overseas, but designed by American based companies that design the slides properly for us to rent them out.
11. Don’t buy from overseas based companies – They are made by a company that ASSEMBLES inflatables. It’s like buying a car designed by the factory that ASSEMBLES Toyotas. They don’t know how to design. They just put them together.
12. Buy so you can rent it – Get items that the clients will want to rent. Don’t buy just because of the wow factor – if you think it’s cool, it means NOTHING. Clients have to want it.
13. People want slides. Bounce houses with slides, and waterslides, so limit your basic bounce house purchases.
14. Get units you can actually MOVE. Yes the 40ft waterslide is epic. No you don’t have a shot at moving it when you’re new. Stay around 400 lbs max.
15. Bounce House combos will be your most consistent items, be ready with enough inventory to meet the demand!
16. Waterslides make you the money, be ready with enough inventory to meet the demand.
17. Your area is different than mine, research #6 and 7 before blindly following what I say.
18. Insurance is a MUST. Don’t rent until you have it.
19. The difference between a great setup and a mediocre one is THE DETAILS. Teach them to employees!
20. Marketing freaking matters!!!!! Google ads will be your best spend because people go to google looking for “bounce house rental near me” and then your ad takes you to the top of the list/map.
21. Never boost a FB post. (unless you have read Christopher Weeds book).
22. FB ads will make you feel fancy but they are hard, and complicated, and make far far far less money than google ads for a bounce house business specifically.
23. Make sure your logo is on your bounce house with a URL or phone number. If not on the banner, then on a yard sign next to it.
24. Give every customer a magnet when you drop off the units.
25. You need branded shirts. One color, with your logo. Add a collar if you think your fancy.
26. When you put a sign next to a bounce house, just the logo and a URL or phone number. The bounce house does the hard work of getting attention!
27. Tarps are a pain in the ass but save you from mud. Use the size tarp you need for your area.
28. Clean tarps on site so you don’t waste 30 mins cleaning each tarp during the week. I have a YouTube video on it.
29. Wipe your water slides down on site and roll wet, so you don’t have to clean them weekly. They’re just going to get wet in 5 days anyways.
30. Mold sucks but it’s not a risk short term. Dry out all your units in September for winter, thats how you win the war with mold.
31. Salesmanship will book more slides than anything else there is. ALWASY BE CLOSING!
32. Start a YouTube channel so you can make tours of the units and put them in the description on the website.
33. You didn’t start a business cause its easy!
34. Flipping units makes you way more money, but its hard, so refer to # 34
35. Hourly rentals make the flips possible and are best for maximizing money, for the longevity of your units and it lowers your liability because your inflatable isn’t a babysitter.
36. Leaving your rentals overnight makes your life so much easier. Pick your flips up in the morning on Sunday’s route.
37. Leaving overnight also saves payroll.
38. Hire a cleaner gal or guy ASAP so you don’t have to do that non-value adding task.
39. Take your cleaner gal with you on pick ups when your company gets bigger, the payroll is worth the energy savings.
40. Never stop working on your website, it is the “store front” for your customers.
41. Don’t confuse working on the website with doing all the work you need to do.
42. Shop at harbor freight extremely often.
43. Drink lots of coffee and drink it black.
44. Quit your job when you’re ready. Know what you need to make to pay your bills, and how you’re going to get that amount of money.
45. Don’t quit your job if you don’t want to. Everyone is different.
46. Inflatables will be 90% or more of your revenue, buy more of those.
47. Add tables and chairs soon though because they’re easy and low maintenance.
48. Concessions are messy and a pain and will slow you down, buy if you want to though.
49. The customer is rarely right, but they’re the only reason we exist, so be flexible.
50. Carry 1 gallon of water with you on your routes, its hot out there!
51. Don’t drink beers with the customers.
52. Hire the minute you can afford it.
53. Fire people that don’t fit the culture of the company and do it FAST.
54. Get a tool kit for every truck (see Nick’s TikTok video for the Oh Shit kit)
55. Bring an extra blower on every route.
56. Go to Iappa, it’s the most fun you can have all year. Being in person with your industry brethren is incredible.
57. Make sure all your equipment has a specific place in the shop.
58. The Rollsall is $4200 and it’s money VERY well spent, trust me.
59. Order the Rollsall now, you won’t have it until February anyways.
60. The addition/usage of a winch is personal. It makes the dolly heavier and the rolling is slow af, but it’s for sure easier
61. Using the Rolling straps that we sell at The Jump Off Store by hand are the happy medium to the winch. It slows you down 2 min to set up, and 2 mins to roll them up after, but it makes it SO EASY. 4 mins is well worth it on flooded and huge slides (Video here)
62. Join the Bounce House Business Mentors FB group. It’s the best way to learn!
63. If you are DEAD SET on winning, get into the Jumpstart Program created by Event Hawk and hosted by me. Everything you need to get from $0 to $100k
64. Used units are the shit. Half price to buy, and full price on your rentals
65. There’s nothing like a new unit though….that bag, that factory roll….the smell…
66. When it comes to the trailer, buy once. 16ft by 6’10” tandem axle with brakes. Big Tex 70pi is my fav.
67. Buy extension cords at Sams Club. 12 gauge 100ft for $65, thats half price, and GREAT cords
68. Buy only 100ft cords so you can just grab and go.
69. Simplicity is scaleable. Complexity is NOT. Putting cones over the anchors is cool When you have 15 rentals in one day, you aren’t bringing 100+ cones with you dude, I promise. Save the unscalable behavior for the marquee events.
70. Avoid excess fees. If you lose a $300 rental over a $30 sand bag fee, it takes 10 more sand bag fees to catch back up to the $300 you just lost!
71. Dri fit clothing and sunscreen are critical to your survival.
72. Customer service is the main differentiator of great businesses to mediocre ones.
73. The smaller the delivery window you give to your clients, the more they like it.
74. Over all, the higher your communication is with your clients, the better.
75. Write off your phone bill, your “home office” your internet, your truck, your gas…everything you can!
76 An LLC is what you need, get it through the secretary of the state website.
77. The 3 pound hammer is Thors Hammer of the bounce house business.
78. A Chevy 1500 is great for delivering bounce houses. Not saying 3500HD dully isn’t bad ass, just not needed.
79. In general, pay cash for all inventory purchases.
80. If you can borrow a shit load of money from grandma to scale faster, then use that “loan” to buy inventory. She loves you, she’ll loan it to you just ask and that interest rate is DOPE.
81. Business credit cards with cash back perks need to make every purchase no matter what. 2% cash back Spark Card from Capital One is my fav cause its easy and clean.
82. If you are good with finances get a 0% intro rate business card and max it out as long as you can pay that balance to $0 before interest hits you (inventory included)
83. Always be recruiting. You don’t need anyone now? Cool, but one guy is gonna quit, one is going to get hurt, and one is gonna get soft cause he fell in love. You need to be ready!
84. Recruiting is key, but the interview is the most important. Interview everyone for 60 mins, and never hire on the spot.
85. You need to know the 3-5 core values of your business so you can make sure your actions and your employees line up with them.
86. The longer you take no money from the business the faster you can grow.
87. No one cares that you take no money from the business except you and your angry wife. Pay yourself something kind of soon.
88. To figure out when to pay yourself, set a goal to how big you want to be, in revenue, and divide that by your average ticket size to see how many rentals that is total, and work backwards to see ROUGHLY how many units you need to do that. It’s Math.
89. Finance everything, except inventory, you need the cash on hand to grow and scale. This is the advice for entrepreneurs, NOT regular employees.
90. Come to Booze and Biz weekly. The learning is great, the community building is priceless!
91. The Christmas light business is great winter hustle, and will out earn your bounce house business within a few years.
92. Workout 3-7 days a week so you’re in good shape to win on the weekends.
93. Google reviews matter. Asking for them in a text with the link that takes them to goole is the key, but crappy service will keep you fromgetting any reviews.
94. Event Hawk will auto text clients on Tuesdays with that review link.
95. Event Hawk does a fantastic job at doing your marketing because it’s built by, and ran by bounce house business owners.
96. A good CPA is a dire must-have, so start looking now!
97. Quick books makes your life easier as well as your CPA’s life easier.
98. Set your prices based off your local competitors, add or subtract money based on the difficulty of picking up the unit, then balance it out by your ambition.
Price = (Comps + Difficulty) x Ambition
99. Good help is hard to find, so take care of your employees like the family they are. Give them all the tips, buy their snacks once and a while, keep them hydrated, have monthly meetings etc.
100. ANSWER THE FUCKING PHONE WHEN IT RINGS
101. If you aren’t having fun, make it fun.
WHOOO! There we go, 101 Bounce house business tips for new bounce house business owners.
Hope you enjoyed that one, and I hope you have some reaction to share, and some questions to ask, we’re here to assist you in growing your business, so lets do this….
What was the ONE tip that you want us to elaborate on right now and go a little more in depth on?
So these shows are a shit ton of fun, and I love doing them, but obviously the point is to TEACH you stuff. The 101 tips all came from my experience growing The Jump Off, and Mark’s experience growing Call the Moonman.
So please, take notes, rewatch these, and do whatever it takes to put the stuff into action!
Let me tell a quick true story that happened today to tell you what doing these things will get you…
So my office Manager Kassie is instructing a bible camp this week until noon, so I’m helping on the calls and texts.
I started a conversation with a lady texting through the Event Hawk funnel wanting Rampage in early July, and she says, “I got your name from the country club in the neighborhood, I think you do all their events right?”
YEP, the nicest neighborhood in the area has lots of parties at the Country Club and we do a rental for almost all of them.
Kassie ended up taking this text conversation over later in the day, but then the woman started asking some oddly specific questions about the velcro stairs and a 2nd hose on the other side of Rampage…
So I text Kassie that I was just going to call her real quick.
It turns out the last slide this woman rented was falling apart and the velcro stairs would literally fall off when her autistic son would try to climb up there, PLUS that rental company left the slide there for over a week! She said they had to BEG them to come take it away.
All in all, she was just nervous, and wanted to make sure that her son would be able to slide!
So we had about a 7 min conversation, and by the end she loved The Jump Off and was super excited to have her waterslide supplied by us.
It’s Customer service, its salesmanship, its attention to details, its going the extra mile to pick up the phone and call her….
It’s the list of 101 things we just covered, plus hard work, dedication and relentless pursuit of doing things better, because doing things “good enough” is the death of your future.
You have to always be looking to evolve and improve, because you don’t compete with others, you compete against yourself.
So tonight, I’m going to close the show out with a little quote…
All the bounce house business tips in the world won’t work, if YOU don’t work!
Thank you guys! Everyone have an amazing evening, and I’ll see you all next week 7pm central for Booze and Biz!