676: This PE Teacher Started a $150k Side Hustle

Summary

Episode Summary: "This PE Teacher Started a $150k Side Hustle"

Podcast: The Side Hustle Show
Host: Nick Loper
Guest: Tim Carstensen of Foam Party All Stars
Episode: 676
Release Date: June 12, 2025

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1. Introduction

Nick Loper welcomes Tim Carstensen, an elementary PE teacher who has successfully transformed his summer side hustle into a thriving business, Foam Party All Stars. Tim shares his journey from initial idea to generating a substantial income alongside his teaching career.

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2. Origin of the Side Hustle

Why Foam Parties?

Tim explains that after 18 years of teaching, he sought a unique summer venture. Initially considering the saturated bounce house market with high insurance costs, Tim discovered the niche of foam parties through a Facebook group. Noticing limited competition in the Chicagoland area, Tim saw an opportunity to offer a fun, low-liability alternative.

Tim Carstensen [00:49]: "I found out that the floor for insurance in the bounce house business is pretty high when you're just starting... I thought, okay, this looks doable."

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3. Initial Setup and Equipment

Starting the Business

Tim launched Foam Party All Stars by handling the basic setup himself, including creating the website and logo. He invested in professional-grade foam cannons priced around $2,500 each and essential equipment like barriers, tents, hoses, generators, and speakers to ensure smooth operations.

Tim Carstensen [07:20]: "The foam cannon itself... cost about $2,500 for the cannon."

Logistics

A typical setup requires a water source, electrical outlets, or generators for larger events. Tim emphasizes the importance of being prepared with backup equipment to handle any technical issues during parties.

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4. Marketing Strategies

Postcard Campaign

In January, Tim initiated a direct mail campaign, sending out approximately 700 postcards to daycares, summer camps, park districts, churches, and schools within a 35-40 mile radius. The postcards highlighted services and directed recipients to the website for more information.

Tim Carstensen [09:33]: "It said, like, we bring a foam party to you... book now at our website."

Facebook Marketing

For birthday and block parties, Tim utilized Facebook ads and leveraged his wife’s account to post in local mom groups, enhancing reach and engagement. Targeting mothers, who are typically the decision-makers for children's parties, proved highly effective.

Tim Carstensen [18:19]: "I use my wife's Facebook account to go into the mom's pages... I run the ads to moms."

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5. First Bookings and Execution

Securing Initial Clients

Postcard responses led to bookings even before Tim held his first foam party. Early inquiries frequently involved questions about logistics, pricing, and safety, which Tim addressed with honesty and professionalism.

Nick Loper [12:09]: "What kind of questions are they asking you?"

First Event Experience

Tim’s inaugural event involved a two-cannon glow foam party for several hundred kids. Despite initial setup challenges, including a faulty water source, the event was a success, teaching him valuable lessons for future parties.

Tim Carstensen [15:12]: "It went well. The kids loved it. It was definitely a learning experience."

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6. Scaling the Business

Reinvesting Profits

Tim reinvested deposits from bookings into acquiring additional foam cannons, expanding his capacity to handle multiple events simultaneously. This strategic reinvestment fueled continuous growth.

Tim Carstensen [28:44]: "I need to go, you know, strike while the iron is hot... expand as quickly as I can."

Recurring Business

Building relationships with larger daycare chains resulted in recurring bookings, as satisfied clients referred Foam Party All Stars to other institutions, creating a snowball effect in demand.

Tim Carstensen [17:35]: "Once you do one or two and get your foot in the door... then it just kind of snowballed."

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7. Team Building and Delegation

Hiring Strategy

As demand increased, Tim expanded his team by hiring teachers and college students available during summers. He emphasized the importance of "hiring slow, firing fast" to maintain quality and reliability.

Tim Carstensen [38:41]: "Hire slow, fire fast... if there's some pattern of something, you need to cut ties quickly."

Training and Management

Tim focused on training team members to ensure consistency in delivering high-quality foam parties. This allowed him to shift from being the sole operator to managing and expanding the business efficiently.

Tim Carstensen [26:09]: "Training the people that are running the foam parties and try to step back from doing as many myself."

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8. Challenges and Solutions

Weather Dependencies

Operating in the Midwest, Tim faced weather-related challenges. He utilized lightning alert apps and adapted by continuing parties in light rain, ensuring minimal disruption while prioritizing safety.

Tim Carstensen [27:17]: "We have a lightning app... if there's no lightning, we do it even if it's raining."

Technical Issues

To mitigate equipment failures, Tim carried backup foam cannons. In instances of malfunction, he promptly addressed client concerns and offered complimentary services to maintain a stellar reputation.

Tim Carstensen [31:21]: "I usually bring a backup set in my own car... I will do it for free."

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9. Revenue Goals and Future Plans

Financial Targets

Tim aims to reach $200,000 in revenue for the season (May-September), leveraging both recurring clients and new bookings from expanded marketing efforts.

Tim Carstensen [40:38]: "We're going to try to hit 200,000 this year which is cool."

Balancing Careers

While maintaining his teaching job, Tim envisions gradually shifting focus to Foam Party All Stars as it continues to grow, ensuring flexibility to spend more time with his young children.

Tim Carstensen [40:29]: "We have to make sure that I'm there to be able to see all of that."

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10. Key Takeaways

Seize Opportunities

Tim advises aspiring entrepreneurs to act on opportunities without overanalyzing, utilizing available resources like podcasts, Facebook groups, and YouTube tutorials to guide their ventures.

Tim Carstensen [42:14]: "If you see an opportunity to open a business, go do it."

Effective Marketing

Targeted marketing, whether through direct mail or social media, is crucial for reaching the right audience and securing initial bookings. Tailoring messages to the specific needs of clients enhances engagement and conversion rates.

Quality and Reputation

Maintaining high standards and swiftly addressing any issues ensures customer satisfaction and fosters positive word-of-mouth referrals, essential for sustainable growth.

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Notable Quotes

• Tim Carstensen [00:49]: "I thought, okay, this looks doable."
• Tim Carstensen [07:20]: "The foam cannon itself... cost about $2,500 for the cannon."
• Tim Carstensen [09:33]: "We bring a foam party to you... book now at our website."
• Tim Carstensen [18:19]: "I use my wife's Facebook account to go into the mom's pages... I run the ads to moms."
• Nick Loper [12:09]: "What kind of questions are they asking you?"
• Tim Carstensen [15:12]: "It went well. The kids loved it. It was definitely a learning experience."
• Nick Loper [42:14]: "If you see an opportunity to open a business, go do it."

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Conclusion

Tim Carstensen’s journey with Foam Party All Stars exemplifies how a well-researched, niche side hustle can evolve into a substantial income stream. Through strategic marketing, effective scaling, and unwavering dedication to quality, Tim successfully balances his teaching career while growing his entrepreneurial venture. Aspiring side hustlers can draw inspiration from Tim’s proactive approach and commitment to seizing opportunities.

For more information or to book a foam party, visit foamallstars.com.

Transcript

[Nick Loper]

This PE teacher started $150,000 side hustle. In this episode, you'll learn the fun, unique business he chose, how he got his first customers, and how he's scaled it to a pretty serious income stream. All on the side from foampartyallstars.com Tim Carstensen. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show.

[Tim Carstensen]

Hey, Nick, thanks for having me. I've been listening to your podcast for quite a while. Love it. And I thought, why not come on and tell our story? Here we.

[Nick Loper]

What a cool example. I guess I just gave it away. It's a foam party business, but stick around. We're covering the startup costs, the marketing tactics, the pricing and delivery, all that good stuff. So you might be able to borrow Tim's idea or a similar local service and spin it up in your own town. But I gotta start off at the beginning. Like, out of all the side hustles, why foam parties? How'd you come up with this?

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, so I've been an elementary PE teacher for the past 18 years, and always in my summers off, I have either another job or an another business. I used to teach and coach in the summers, driver's ed, stuff like that, which has its own stories.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got the whole summer off. I might as well take advantage.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, yeah. So in 2022, in the summer, I was kind of looking for. For something else. And at first I stumbled upon the bounce house business and I kind of did a deep dive on that, but for me, it was a little too saturated. I found out that the floor for insurance in the bounce house business is pretty high when you're just starting, it's. It's hard to make money in the beginning.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, interesting. Do you find, like, you. You're going to need a lot of inventory, multiple bounce houses, like, to make the insurance pencil out for somebody like starting in that space.

[Tim Carstensen]

Even if you had one or two bounce houses to start, your floor for insurance might be, let's say, five, six thousand dollars. Which, you know, if you're renting out a bounce house for a couple hundred bucks, it's going to take a while to get that back. I found some people that were doing bounce houses down there in the southern states. Arizona, Florida, California, Texas. We're also doing FO for kids. And I think it was a, a party rental Facebook group that I stumbled upon that and I thought, oh, okay, that's interesting. Foam parties for kids. I mean, I remember when I was in college, I went to a foam party, but I don't think that's not really a kids thing. So, you know, it picked my interest and I was like, okay, I good at working with kids. 18 years teaching, you know, elementary PE. And then I, you know, looked around here, around the Chicagoland area, and I found out at that point there was only one other, and they were about 50 miles north of me. So that was really the only competition I could find. So I thought, okay, this looks doable.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. Okay. And maybe we should pause. Like, I. I kind of have a vision and I've been on your website. Like, it's just like kids running through walls of bubbles. Like, you know, sometimes up to the shoulders in bubbles and, like, it just looks like a lot of fun.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah.

[Nick Loper]

To cast that visual of, like, what we're talking about here.

[Tim Carstensen]

Right. We play kid friendly music, even hired a voiceover artist to do like a countdown to the foam party. You know, like a New Year's Eve countdown. Get them excited. There's rules of the foam all over the speakers. And we have these giant. We call them foam cannons and they shoot foam around. You can pretty much fill up like a 30 foot by 30 foot area. And depending on the size and the age of the kid, you could keep it low if it's a little kid, or you could bury them up high if it's a teenage type kid. It totally depends on the situation, but the kids just like dancing around and frolicking around with their friends and enjoying it, exploring it and things like that.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, so it sounds like it was born from this research. Research of looking at the inflatables business, the bounce house rental side hustle and saying, oh, it's interesting, as I'm on the websites of some of these other service providers, here's something else that they offer. Like maybe we could just spin up only that part. It's gotta be lower liability or something like that. And maybe that might make sense.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah. Since it was kind of a novel idea to me. And I ran it by my wife who shut down my bounce house business idea. And she said, that's interesting. Tell me more about that.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. Okay.

[Tim Carstensen]

From that point, I was like, okay, well, I might have an okay from my wife, which is good. We have three young kids, so she's an angel and stays at home with the kids a lot when I'm out doing phone parties. So I kept looking into it and, and looking at the, you know, the competition that was there. And then I found a Facebook group of foam party providers around the country and studied every post that I could from. From that Facebook group.

[Nick Loper]

There's a Facebook group for everything. That's crazy.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, there really is. And they kind of lay it out in the. In the Facebook group, how to start things and how much success they' for a lot of the people. And that was kind of my. My guideline for how to get things started and just kind of went from there, you know, started up the business, thought of a name, Foam Party All Stars and, you know, did all the starting business stuff, Got the logo and the website, did that myself, which I don't know. If I had to do it again, I might have had a professional to start out with that instead of spending so many hours on something so basic. But. But you, you know, you learn. You learn.

[Nick Loper]

That's okay. Everybody starts somewhere. I think everybody has that struggle of, like, trying to make a website, make it look a certain way and. Yeah, that's. That's like a. An entrepreneurial rite of passage.

[Tim Carstensen]

Exactly. Yeah. You know, you might save a little money, but you spend a lot of time. Sometimes that's the trade off. You got away in that situation.

[Nick Loper]

So, building the website, do you have any equipment at this point, like, or. We kind of like, I want to wait and to see if we get any bookings, like, what's going on here.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah. So I bought my first foam party set up right around when I had the website go live after I, you know, get all the business stuff, you know, register with the state and everything like that. And then in. In January, I sent out some postcards to kind of get the ball rolling and as a way to have people know that we exist. And we ended up getting quite a few responses and bookings from that, which was awesome.

[Nick Loper]

And since it's wintertime, people are like, can you come by in May? Like, they're planning ahead. And so you don't necessarily need to have the stuff, like, ready for that weekend.

[Tim Carstensen]

Right. So these aren't like the. The private birthday party type of things. These would be interest from daycares, summer camps, park district, churches, schools, things like that, who book farther in advance than a typical birthday party would.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. So you build up your own mailing list of the daycare summer camp, and then you put out kind of a really targeted mailing just to them. Just to those offices, Right?

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah. So I found pretty much any daycare, summer camp, park district, library, elementary school within about 35 or 40 miles. I made a list, and I sent the same postcard to all of them. Now I kind of break it up with individual marketing for the different types. So I might. I Would send a different postcard to schools than I would to churches or libraries and things like that. But back then it was just the one postcard. Vistaprint. Send it all. Hope we get some responses and definitely worked to get the first few responses.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. How many, how many did he send out?

[Tim Carstensen]

I want to say maybe 700 total.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. Okay.

[Tim Carstensen]

So you know you're putting a little bit of money into it at that point.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. Casting a wide enough net to kind of know if you are shooting completely blank after 700 and maybe, maybe the messaging needs some tweaking.

[Tim Carstensen]

Might be time to turn it around. Right. Yeah. So. And at that point I thought, well, if I needed to, if it wasn't going to work, I could sell the equipment back and I wouldn't really be all that much of a loss.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. Relatively low risk. What did the equipment cost?

[Tim Carstensen]

The foam cannon itself, I use a professional grade model that cost at the time about $2,500 for the canon. And then I would say for other things that are in the foam party setup, we have these barriers like PVC and some vinyl with our, our marketing on there. Barriers to keep the foam from coming back at the person shooting the foam.

[Nick Loper]

And okay, I'm picturing like a medieval like shield.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah. In case the wind shifts. So it's. It's kind of like a little wall about 4ft high maybe with our marketing on the front that they see. And then it keeps the foam from blowing back at us and getting on our equipment. And then just little things like. Well, we have a 5x5 tent with our branding on it that just kind of makes it look professional. And then a lot of little things like tools that you might need and hoses and electrical cor. And speakers.

[Nick Loper]

Yes. You just need a water source and you know, byo bubbles basically. And then in this professional Canon at a bare minimum.

[Tim Carstensen]

Right. Yeah. So we do need a water source. Just a regular hose hookup works. And then an electrical outlet. A regular outlet works if it's just for one foam cannon. If it's multiple foam cannons or if you're not close enough to an outlet, then we bring a generator. In that situation. For most of like the smaller events, daycares, summer camps and stuff like that, it's just one. One foam cannon. And so yeah, I started off with one. Got a few bookings before I even did any foam parties, even though I had some booked. I bought a second setup and it just kind of kept on rolling.

[Nick Loper]

What did the postcard say? Was there pricing on there was just like but, you know, booking now for, you know, summer 2023 or whatever it.

[Tim Carstensen]

Was, it said, like, we bring a foam party to you. And then it said, like, foam parties are great for. And then I tried to hit summer camps, daycares, school events, church events, library, summer reading kickoffs, block parties, birthday parties. And then it says, like, foam party packages include, you know, foam cannon, a foam party leader, which is you showing.

[Nick Loper]

Up and leading the thing.

[Tim Carstensen]

Right. Which at that point is just me. I'm the only guy that's. That's available.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Tim Carstensen]

And then, you know, book now at our website. We did have pricing on our website for basic, like, you know, one hour, one cannon, or we also do something called glow foam, which is. Looks like the foam is glowing in the dark for night events. So we had pricing for that on the website, not on the postcard.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. What's it cost to get you to.

[Tim Carstensen]

Come out for a one hour, like a birthday party? It's 3. 75.

[Nick Loper]

And then most people just, okay, we'll book you for an hour, and then you kind of clean up, tear down, and hopefully you've got another one booked for the afternoon.

[Tim Carstensen]

Right? Yeah. So for birthday parties, which is a lot of what we do on the weekends, birthday parties and block parties, we usually just an hour, which we found is a good amount of time for. For the kids. If you're doing two hours with the same group of kids, you know, they kind of lose interest.

[Nick Loper]

That's. That's fair.

[Tim Carstensen]

It's opposite of an upsell. A lot of times it'll be, you know, we want to do two hours for this birthday. And it'll be me saying, well, we found that one hour is a good amount of time. But. And also, if you do a phone party on a grass surface, two hours, your. Your chance of mud is. Is a lot higher than one hour. You don't generally see any kind of mud. But I. I try to warn people this ahead of time.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. Yeah, there's other. Other logistics involved. Okay.

[Tim Carstensen]

Right. And it does feel weird to try to, you know, almost, you know, reverse upsell, you know. You sure you want to do two hours? I try to do that just to make it the best experience for. For the kids and the parents.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, that's fair. And then. Then it just dissolves. Like, it just evaporates away and. Or you hose it down.

[Tim Carstensen]

The foam generally dissipates within 20 minutes to a half hour, depending on if it's on grass or. Or, you know, asphalt, concrete. What. That will change it a little bit. And if it's windy out and things like that, we can hose down the grass. But really, it doesn't really make a much of a difference. You wouldn't even know it was there after, you know, an hour or two. So, I mean, it's just wet.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah.

[Tim Carstensen]

Because it's mostly water. We use about 100, 125 gallons of water for a one hour party, for one cannon. So you know that in a concentrated area, you can definitely tell that it's wet.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. All right. So you send out all these postcards, 700 postcards. You start to get some inbound inquiries through the website, people start calling you, hey, we want to book this thing. What kind of questions are they asking you? Because you're like, you know, you're presenting all the confidence of like, yeah, we'll bring the party to you, but like, never having done it before, like, what kind of questions come up that now you know the answer to, but at the time you're kind of like, uh, yeah, we, we could totally do that. Tim's answer to those initial inbound inquiries, plus his first paying gig coming up right after this.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, it was definitely a kind of a fake it till you make it type situation where, you know, you try to be prepared, you know, by researching what other people have done around the country, but you've never really done it before. So you're kind of going on the fly and, you know, just being honest. And if they ask you a question and you don't know the answer, just let them know that you will get back to them as you can. But with the daycares that we initially got, most of the time it would be like, all right, we have 125 kids. Like, how long do we need a phone party for? How much is it going to cost? Is it going to ruin the grass? Which is normal question that we get. And then, do they get wet? Do they need a towel? Do they need a change of clothes? Does it sting their eyes? Is a question that we get a lot. The answer is no.

[Nick Loper]

Got it, Got it. All right, let's fast forward to party number one. Then you go and you set this thing up for the daycare or wherever it is, and it goes off without a hitch. It goes, there's, you know, kids crying and screaming like, you know, anything could happen at this point. What happens?

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, it's definitely a learning process. I mean, I, I set it up at my house and, you know, did a party for my, the kids and the neighbors, so.

[Nick Loper]

That's right. I have a Trial run.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, right. Which, which was smart because that would have been not good if, if I didn't. However, my first party that I had booked was actually kind of higher on the difficulty scale. It was. And it was a two foam cannon glow foam party. So that is actually much trickier. So glow foam, there's a special additive that you put into the foam that makes it glow. Looks like it's you know, glowing UV glow once, once it gets dark out. But you also have UV lights that are, that are hanging from your tents which, you know, there's a lot, a lot more cords to deal with. It's just, it's trickier especially first event. And plus it was two foam cannons at a time. So then you run into things like am I going to be filling up the water containers fast enough with one water source and two, two cannons and you know, with a huge crowd. I mean there was a couple hundred kids there which looking back I would have wanted more than two foam cannons if, if I knew there was that many kids. But I was just happy to be there at that point. I showed up and the setup took way longer than it, it should have spent probably an hour and 15 minutes setting up which half that for a two foam cannon. But yeah, it went well.

[Nick Loper]

You get better as you go along. You get more reps in.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, oh absolutely. And it went well. The kids loved it. It was definitely a learning experience. And you know, each one that you do, you kind of pick up something or might, you might do something wrong. I think that one as well their water source at the school, there was like a pebble somehow stuck in the water source. So then I had to run 250ft of hoses to the next closest water source. And yeah, so one of those things, you know, they, they didn't check it beforehand, but which now I tell people to do but back then didn't have the experience. So.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. Yeah. So learning a learning curve, learning process and a non zero amount of equipment involved between the cannons and the speakers and the tents and the hoses and everything else. It's helpful to know.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, I basically packed. We, we have a minivan, we fold all the seats down and I could fit two foam in the minivan. But I mean it's jam packed like, like you probably way too much stuff in there.

[Nick Loper]

But yeah, you're not seeing out the, at the rear view anymore.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, no, definitely not.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. So you get these initial bookings from the postcards and hopefully some positive feedback from those and, and maybe some word of Mouth. But like, what happens after that in terms of driving additional traffic? Because it is, you know, maybe you can. Well, we're going to book you every year and there's some level of recurring revenue here, but it's, it's a lot of times it's got to be kind of a one and done thing for, you know, onto the next. Onto the next gig.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah. So on a daily occurrence, it's a one and done thing and onto the next gig. But we definitely have a lot of recurring customers. We found that once we started doing some of the daycare locations, some of the larger chain daycare locations, once you do one or two and get your foot in the door and you show that you do a great job, the kids love it, you're easy to work with, then, you know, it might not happen the same year, but the, the following year, you know, if we had three of a chain daycare, then the next year we had 12. And it just kind of snowballed in that way, especially with a lot of the larger daycares. You know, we did a good job for them and, you know, the following year they would all rebook and then they would tell some of their neighboring daycares of the same chain and they kind of snowballed in that way.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. Okay.

[Tim Carstensen]

Now the other half of the business, I would say, is birthday parties and block parties. For that we marketed with Facebook ads. And also we. I posted a lot in every neighboring Facebook group that I could find with, you know, good pictures and an explanation of what a foam party is. And there's a very positive response with that. I even use my wife's. Maybe I shouldn't say this on the air, but I use my wife's Facebook account to go into the mom's pages. And I would post from her account since, you know, they don't really always allow males to post. But since it was under my wife's account, I was able to post.

[Nick Loper]

So it would be like city name. Moms would be like an example of a group that would exist.

[Tim Carstensen]

Exactly. And there's a lot of them for birthday parties especially, 98% of the time, it's the mom that is booking the party and the dad, when you get there is asking, are you going to kill his grass? But the mom books the party. So that's like the target market. When I run ads, I run the ads to moms. I really don't run it to dads.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. Yeah. It's an interesting. We're seeing all sorts of creative, you know, birthday party like, especially elementary school age, you can go to the bounce house. Place is a really popular one. You go to the arcade. We've had a couple where our kids have been invited to go. It's like a video game truck. Like, a guy shows up in his F250 and behind it is like this pretty good sized, like, horse trailer. But he's got, like a couch in there and like this wall of TVs, and he's got like every console imaginable as, like, it was a pretty cool setup. And I don't know how much it costs, but again, it's like, you know, upfront cost for him in the setup and then just. Just, you know, do two, three parties a day and slowly, you know, recoup that. And after a while, you know, maybe you got to buy new games every now and again after a certain point, it's all gravy.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, I've heard of those too. Those actually look cool. I would love to check one of those out, but not my business. But it would be cool. I think, you know, my kids would love it.

[Nick Loper]

The other one, somebody sent me this. It was like a Nerf party rental. And it looked like they were, you know, maybe they would do kids parties, but it was more like corporate team building where we're going to set up this like, like pretty intense, like, you know, with, you know, inflatable pylons and like, almost like a paintball arena. But like, well, could it come to you? We're gonna have a Nerf. A Nerf war.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah. Those look fun too. I saw this, a similar thing with almost like a Nerf war, but it was with water. Water guns. And somehow on the vest, it registered when you got shot with the water and similar type thing.

[Nick Loper]

Oh, like a full on, like, laser tag type of setup.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah. I thought that was cool.

[Nick Loper]

So, yeah, people. People spend money on this stuff. It's an interesting place to play. And I do. I think you're right. Like, okay. Especially if there's a franchise or a chain daycare. I got my toe in the door with this one. And now you can see how that would snowball, and you can see how it would turn into recurring revenue. We'll come back for our field day next year and we'll reserve that almost in advance. Well, let's pencil you in. Let's get on the calendar.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, it was hard initially with some of the chain daycares to get in because a lot of times you have to go through their corporate office. You have to file certain paperwork, and nobody Seems to want to give you the paperwork. They say, oh, you're not a registered vendor. It's like, how I'll be a registered vendor. Just send me the paperwork.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, yeah, show me how to register.

[Tim Carstensen]

Exactly. So but once you break through that and you get registered, then it's like, okay, you know, people see you do a good job. And then it kind of has snowballed for us at least.

[Nick Loper]

And we see the birthday party thing snowball, word of mouth wise too, where it's like the kid goes to the film party, the kid goes to the video game truck rental party. Well, I want that for my birthday. Right. And so this kind of like starts to, starts to spread. And then the moms text the other moms to be like, well, who, who is the, you know, Timmy really wants the phone party. You know, who, who did you use?

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah. And in the end, I think really our best marketing is seeing our phone parties because, you know, a lot of times you might see pictures and you might think, well, that's kind of weird. I don't know that maybe that would be fun, maybe it wouldn't. But then if you see it and it's kind of like, okay, that's, the kids are really enjoying this. That's pretty cool. And then we have built into again, we hired a voiceover artist that does like a promo for us. Like, hey, if you want to have your own phone party at a daycare or a school or a birthday party, or come get a postcard or come get a business card from your phone party leader and you know, and then the next song goes. So that's another way that we market.

[Nick Loper]

This is just, this is like built over the, over the loudspeakers, like into your party playlist.

[Tim Carstensen]

Exactly. Like a, you know, 25 second commercial for our own business during the phone party. And that usually drives, you know, several parents over to say, hey, this is really cool. Like how much do you charge? Or can you come to here? Or so it's, it's been effective for sure.

[Nick Loper]

Now would you go, would you go all the way into Chicago? It looks like you're kind of out in the burbs a little bit. But if I search foam party Chicago, you're there on the first page.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, so we, we don't go out, out to Chicago too much sometimes, but basically if, if we're not booked around us, then yes, we do some like block parties out there. Block parties are big. To be honest with you. I, I, I really need to change up my, our Google business profile and Add Chicago in. But I'm, I'm worried because I know sometimes if you change certain things you can get suspended and I don't.

[Nick Loper]

And yeah, like expand the service area on the little map back.

[Tim Carstensen]

Right. So I've kind of been on the.

[Nick Loper]

Fence and if you don't have to drive that far like then that's, that could be an advantage too if it's.

[Tim Carstensen]

A big enough party. Like there's a kids museum that we're doing that's like an hour and a half away. But I mean they're doing four hours of multi cannons so it's like, yeah, we'll come to you for sure. It was a kid's birthday up there. It would probably be. No, I can refer you to somebody else that does foam parties in your area.

[Nick Loper]

Got it. Are you going to franchise the thing and go, go nationwide and be like, oh, I've got a. Sure, yeah, we've got a guy in that area.

[Tim Carstensen]

There are a couple places around the country that are starting to franchise their phone party business. I'm not planning to do that myself. Still have the teaching job, but yeah, there are some that are starting to do that.

[Nick Loper]

Fair enough. That's going to be the next private equity roll out so we can acquire all these different companies.

[Tim Carstensen]

H Vac and then foam parties.

[Nick Loper]

Right. That'll be the next trendy thing, I promise.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah.

[Nick Loper]

All right, so Facebook ads, Facebook groups targeting the local neighborhood groups, the mom groups. It is just kind of like an introductory post if you're not already a member there. He. I'm Tim. You know, I'm from this nearby town. This is what we do, you know, look at all these happy smiling kids. Is there any offer or call to action? There's more, just kind of like, hey, you know, we're here when you need us.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, I don't really do like an offer as in like a discount offer, but I usually just say, you know, for party packages and info, go to our website and then kind of leads them there and then we have more information on our website and then if they have questions, they'll usually email or call.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, got it. It Is there a like calendar availability like for somebody to just click and book or it's like they go through like a request, the pricing is on there but like they gotta fill out a form and there's a little bit of confirmation that needs to happen for the date availability.

[Tim Carstensen]

We don't have like an instant availability option. We have a form to fill out with, you know, where the phone parties at, how many People are going to be in attendance and things like that. And then they send that to us. Get it it to my phone and email immediately. I say on there that I'll get back to you with, with availability within 24 hours. It's usually way quicker than that. I, you know, try to set the bar low and beat that expectation. And then they're like, oh, that was quick. You know, but if we had a full calendar of when our we're available, especially in the beginning of the season of like, wow, these people are always available. They must not be too much in demand. So, you know, which seems crazy, but kind of a something that people think about it.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, that's fair. I didn't think about that.

[Tim Carstensen]

And then sometimes it's a little bit complicated with the schedule because now that we have nine phone party setups, we could technically be doing nine phone parties at a time. But most of the time we'll have, you know, employee that's not available that day or you gotta drive from this party in the southern suburbs to the northern suburbs and you gotta take all that into account. So it's hard to just make it a one size fits all calendar. So I kind of do that manually.

[Nick Loper]

Nine foam party setups. More with Tim in just a moment, including how he's grown his team so he doesn't have to run every party by himself. And the smart way he was able to fund some of that new equipment coming up right after this. Nine phone party setups. So clearly there was demand for this.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah.

[Nick Loper]

And I imagine you started to get the inquiries where you need to be two places at once. I'm turning down money here. So there we go. Buy setup number two. Number three. And you got to replicate yourself too to go have somebody else deliver the experience.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah. To be honest with you, I think replicating myself and learning to delegate has been one of the lessons that I wish I had learned initially. Although at some point when you're starting out, you don't have the luxury of that. You don't necessarily have the money to pay people to do the actual phone party, the actual job. And you just need to be the jack of all trades now. I'm trying to, still trying. It's a work in progress more so eliminate myself from the, you know, regular birthday parties where we might have four or five at a time. And I usually will only go to the larger multi canon events unless I'm needed in an emergency or something like that. But you know, okay. I also have to man the phones and emails and you know, Invoices. And if it rains on a Saturday and we have 10 parties, I'm going to be on the phone all day because, you know, well, now it looks like 60 chance. I don't know. Let's keep you posted. Okay. Now in my area, it looks like 30% chance. And. But, you know, it's. So it's, it's a. Luckily it doesn't rain that often, but it throws a wrench.

[Nick Loper]

I didn't even think about that. It's just like they just have to postpone or. What do you, what do you do?

[Tim Carstensen]

So you, you can do a phone party in the rain. Don't do it, obviously, if it's lightning anywhere in the area. So we have a lightning apps where it alerts us if there's lightning anywhere in the area. It's not fun for the person doing the phone party if it's raining, but for the kids, they're wet anyway, so they don't.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, they don't care.

[Tim Carstensen]

Generally seem to care. I would say a lot more people end up just doing the phone party in the rain as opposed to rescheduling or canceling, especially with birthday parties because they might not be able to reschedule with, you know, invitations going out a month or two in advance. So a lot of them will just say, let's just do it, and we go ahead with it as long as there's no lightning or anything like that.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. It's, it's. You're. You're committed. You have to, like, you know, hope for good weather that day.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, yeah.

[Nick Loper]

How long was it before you needed to expand to the second set, the third set, and hire additional team members?

[Tim Carstensen]

I think I might even have gotten a third set up before we even did any parties because it's a very seasonal business around us, especially because we're in the Midwest Chicago suburbs. So it really doesn't get warm enough to do a phone party until at least late April. Even then it's kind of spotty, depending on the day. So, you know, when you start marketing in January, you kind of get a feel for, you know, how many bookings you have. And I realized that I need to just reinvest these deposits into some more foam party equipment.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. This is going back to some of the initial postcard mailings where they would, they would book it, they would put down a deposit. So you're. You're collecting some cash flow right away. And then, okay, we'll take the balance upon delivery or, you know, a day of. And so you could. You could pay that forward into, like, oh, there's clearly some demand here we're getting. And multiple inquiries for the same day.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah. And I didn't want to be stuck where, you know, turning away too many parties, which, I mean, as much as I try not to, it still happens for various reasons, but I tried to expand as quickly as possible and to be able to keep up with the demand that I was seeing, and it's just kind of kept expanding, you know, for the last couple years that I've been doing it, a lot of the people that run foam parties for us are teachers that I know since they have summers off it, you know, the schedule aligns with their schedule, and then sometimes college students that are home for even a larger time frame than the teachers are.

[Nick Loper]

So, okay, yeah, here's a fun summer job. Come hang out at this foam party. Be the DJ for a little bit.

[Tim Carstensen]

And it is fun. I mean, I love running the party still. I try to step back from doing as many as I did last year. I did almost 100 myself, which, again, I enjoy it. But. But I have three young kids at home, and I also have to answer the phones, emails, and everything, so more of a, you know, work on your business, not in your business type of thing. And I feel like I'm best served to just train the people that are running the foam parties and try to step back from doing as many myself.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. And it's great. It's not, you know, phone parties by Tim. It's Foam Party All Stars. Right. So you have set it up in such a way where you don't need to be there. And. And I imagine most of the people calling don't expect the owner of the business to show up. They expect you to have a team in place or team member come and do it.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah. Unless they had me the first year where I did, you know, a majority of them, almost. Not a majority, but a large, large chunk, then they might. But no, I think people understand, and it's gone well. I've met a lot of great people, and, you know, there's been ups and downs. We've had a couple events where the foam cannon broke, and it was no fault of ours, but, you know, it's. It's not a good feeling when you're, you know, you have the countdown. All right, are you ready? 5, 4, 3, 2. And then just. Oh, no. Like, nothing comes out. Like, oh, boy. Kids are chanting, we want foam. That's. It's not a good feeling. For that reason, I usually Bring a whole backup set in my own car just in case. But it's happened a couple times and I don't know, 6, 600 plus parties that we've done, so.

[Nick Loper]

Right, right. Have some backup and redundancy. If you got two, you got one, if you got one, you got none. But yeah, that's okay. Timeout. Put a pause in. That will be. Just give me 15 minutes, we'll set up the other one and we're good to go.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna run my car or just have it with you. But yeah, it's happened a couple times. Not fun, but the people have been twice. It was at a daycare and they were very understanding. I was just like, you know what? I'm just, I'm gonna. Can we find a day for me to come back? And I will, I will do it for free. Because this is obviously, you know, don't want to do anything for free but inconvenience them.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. But you got to preserve that reputation and keep customers happy. That's one of the things that I've noticed here is like dozens and dozens of, you know, positive five star reviews for Foam Party All Stars. You do anything specific or proactive to collect those after a party gone.

[Tim Carstensen]

Well, you know, I just send an email, which I, I should also be sending texts, to be honest with you, but I sent a email. Thank you for having a phone party with Phone Party All Stars. If you felt you had a five star experience, you know, please click this link and leave us a review. If you have any. I don't phrase it this way, but if any negative feedback, you know, please email the owner, Tim, at this email and. Or call and we've really only had one that got back to me and said, hey, I wanted to say some. There was some stuff that I wanted. Wasn't 100% happy with and it was good because I was glad that they brought it to my attention. That was one that one of my workers was doing and I would never have known. It was nothing major, but just, you know, it's good to be able to give feedback to the. The worker even though I'm not there and I didn't get a negative review out of it.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, collect some. If you felt you had a five star experience, here's what you can do.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[Nick Loper]

And if you have some constructive criticism, we'd love to hear it too.

[Tim Carstensen]

Exactly.

[Nick Loper]

Because that's how we get back better. All right, so we have several different varieties of foam parties. Sounds like most of the time we've got other people going out to deliver those now. Yeah, the website says we could accommodate up to a thousand participants. That's a lot of foam. Is that all nine cannons going at once?

[Tim Carstensen]

Well, now we can. Yeah, I mean we. Yeah, probably. And that, that would be more so for like a community event or festival which, you know, we've partnered with a few neighboring towns and, and done community events that are, that are larger. We've also a lot of fun runs that either through an elementary school or a park district. Some of those get pretty large where we are bringing a lot of cannons to those. And then the kind of the niche glow foam, different colors of foam we can do. And then I even have gender reveal on there which we don't get a lot of interest for. I should probably just take it off the website. But definitely intriguing and I think it would be cool. But it's, it's a lot of money for colored foam for your gender reveal.

[Nick Loper]

Well, I saw one the other day. It was like college bed parties, which was not what I thought it was going to be. Once I clicked on it. It was like decorating your bed with a blanket for the school that you got accepted into and a bunch of pillows and sweatshirts and stuff. And it's like, oh, could you blast off cannons in purple and gold for Washington Huskies or something? Maybe the gender reveal thing, maybe there is something to that or something similar.

[Tim Carstensen]

I saw that same thing actually. And there's also along a similar vein of bedding. But there's like kids sleepover parties now where they set up like elaborate tents and set up, I think mostly indoor, but I think might be outdoor too. And like a company actually comes out and decorates it with your theme and you know, Taylor Swift sleepover. And I mean it's kind of amazing.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a party in a box. Like a prepackaged type of thing.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, definitely.

[Nick Loper]

I mean one of the risks be like, well, is this just a. Do I go in all in on this business that like happens to be an 18 month fad and then it's over? Like do you see any of that with, with phone parties or is it like, yeah, I think this is here to stay.

[Tim Carstensen]

You know what, I've always had that in the back of my mind, especially starting out. Like I was kind of skeptical, like, is this really going to be a thing? But it honestly seems to be picking up traction. I have more competitors now definitely, which honestly I'm an on good, good terms. And we actually refer parties to Each other if we're fully booked, you know, if I know they do a good job.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. Caught it on the upswing.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah. So a lot more competitors, but our sales are still going up from where we were last year, which went up from the year before. So I would say it's definitely a growing trend. And I know I don't want to knock on bounce houses, but I'm an elementary school teacher, and our district, we can't even do bounce houses anymore. There was an injury at another school or something like that. So a lot, lot. A lot of daycares are the same way where they're risk management. People say that phone parties are fine, but balance houses are not. Honestly, I think both are safe, but that's just me.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, the insurance for the bounce house thing was too expensive. What's insurance cost for home parties?

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, it's not bad. Just for. For a 1 million, 2 million million policy, it was, I want to say, about 12, 1300 bucks.

[Nick Loper]

It's not too bad as like an annual premium.

[Tim Carstensen]

Right? Yeah.

[Nick Loper]

You tolerate that? We can make that back in a few parties.

[Tim Carstensen]

Absolutely. Yeah. That's reasonable. The 5,000 for the bounce houses, that was a little much, but.

[Nick Loper]

Right. I mean, it's all kind of this equation of, well, what's my pathway to break even here? And I love the. Well, we're going to make some investment in marketing in these postcards, but we're going to collect the deposit up front. Even if it's going to be several months, we can use the deposits to buy the equipment or pay for the equipment and kind of a creative way to. To. To go about it, see if there's any. Any demand here.

[Tim Carstensen]

Well, I mean, especially starting out, you know, my wife and I both have W.2 jobs. We're doing fine. So for me, it was more like, you know, what if I see the opportunity here, I need to go, you know, strike while the iron is hot type of thing. You know, I need to expand as quickly as I can, and I don't want to hold back, you know, just because I don't want to spend the money if I know that we'll make money on the back end.

[Nick Loper]

Have you gotten the kids involved in the business at all?

[Tim Carstensen]

So my kids are. My youngest turned 4, so 4, 5, and 7. So they have been to a ton of foam parties. But it's funny, they still like it. And like, I've. They've done at least 20, because every time, you know, it's like, hey, you know, the girl scout troops coming over, let's do a phone party. You know, my, my wife's like, hey, they haven't done a phone party before. Let's bring the baseball team over. And it's like, yeah, sure, no problem. But they still enjoy it, so. So to me it's like, maybe this has some staying power if they've done this so many times and they still like it. So.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. Yeah, they're a little bit young to hire them to run the DJ booth or set up the equipment, but it's cool that they're exposed to this entrepreneurial side of mom and dad.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, not quite yet. I need to talk to my accountant about, you know, can I start up a Roth IRA for them, you know, type of thing, but we'll see.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, get them a couple years. It'd be hauling equipment for you and, and yeah, absolutely. Get them paid.

[Tim Carstensen]

Yeah, I mean, they're in some of the promotional pictures since, you know, I've done a lot of phone parties with them, so I think it would probably be legal, but I need to consult with my accountant.

[Nick Loper]

Yes. Child modeling contracts. Licensing rights, Usage rights.

[Tim Carstensen]

Exactly, exactly.

[Nick Loper]

Now we're going to do social media for you. And maybe there is something to that. Any big surprises along the way or you know, you know, disaster stories aside from the things not working, but anything else that, that stands out, it's been surprising.

[Tim Carstensen]

And this isn't maybe not the best answer, but just the amount of great people that I've met along the way, I didn't think it would be that way. I thought it would be like a lot more negative experiences. And when things have gone wrong, people have been very understanding and I didn't expect that. I thought it would be more cutthroat type thing. But I've definitely learned. A mistake that I've definitely learned is the old adage like hire slow fire fast. I. I've come to find out not through many people that have worked for me, but just a couple that, you know, if somebody's, you know, showing when they first take the job that they're not doing things the right way, not showing up on time, or there are any kind of issues, you need to take care of that right away. Otherwise it could has the potential to kind of take your brand down with you and your company will suffer. That was definitely, you know, an issue, especially the first year. Again, that kind of led to me as the owner stepping in and doing a lot more parties than I probably should have needed to. But you gotta kinda rescue things if, if nobody else is available.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, it's on you to pick up the slack. But yeah, if, if people aren't performing early on, given the guidelines and the expectations like you have to think like the first couple weeks on the job is gonna be their best foot forward. If it's not going well, it was like oh, how are they gonna be in three months?

[Tim Carstensen]

Exactly. Don't think that they're going to turn it all around. Like if there's, I mean obviously give em a chance. Mistakes happen. However, if you see some pattern of something, you need to cut ties quickly. You know. Otherwise you know that with a new business, one bad Google review now we haven't really had any luckily.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. So it's like it's super fragile early on. Right. It's like the reputation is everything if you end up getting somebody upset.

[Tim Carstensen]

Exactly.

[Nick Loper]

Is there a revenue target you're shooting for this season? Where, where do you want to take this thing? Is it, does it become a full time thing aside from the teaching gig?

[Tim Carstensen]

Definitely. We're going to try to hit 200,000 this year which is cool. I mean especially because it's basically May through end of September. So it's kind of jam packed in just a few months.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, that's great.

[Tim Carstensen]

I think we should be able to get there. But that's the goal for revenue side and then while simultaneously trying to kind of remove myself from doing as many of the, the day to day parties. So those are my, my main goals for for foam this year. I'll probably keep doing both jobs for at least the foreseeable future and then just kind of see where we're at. The one thing that could cause me to step back from one or the other just my kids are getting to the age where they're starting to be in T ball, soccer, dance classes and I want to make sure that I'm there to be able to see all of that. I don't want to be the dad that is off to work instead of, of seeing all their, their things.

[Nick Loper]

Right. Yeah. You're like that was, that was the whole point of this to have extra time, freedom down the road.

[Tim Carstensen]

Right. So that's where the kind of the rubber meets the road with that decision with me. But for the foreseeable future gonna keep doing both. It's definitely challenging to, to balance both with the young kids, but doing the best I can.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, I think it's really cool what you've built and the example that you set and saying well my income doesn't have to be fixed. You know, we could start this thing on the side and grow it in a kind of organic and low risk way. So I'm pretty excited by that. So foampartyalstars.com is where you can find Tim. If you're in the Chicago area, go book him for a party. Do them a favor. Foampartyallstars.com let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side Hustle Nation.

[Tim Carstensen]

If you see an opportunity to open a business, go do it. Sometimes I think I am sort of a paralysis by analysis type of person. Although it might not seem like it from when I said that. I keep kept reinvesting in the business. But if you see the opportunity to open a business, go do it. There are so many resources, whether it be listening to people on side Hustle Nation that have already, you know, entered the same niche or Facebook groups where people are running the same type of business, or YouTube videos. There's a YouTube video to describe how to do every step of opening a business. I have no formal background in business. You know, I've sold on ebay and Amazon a little bit, but. And I was able to learn everything that I needed to know, obviously with some trial and error along the way. But if you see an opportunity, definitely take it.

[Nick Loper]

Well, I think it's a really cool case study. On the marketing side. Going back to your 700 postcards, right? We talk about, you know, the Dream 100 strategy was like, and some people kind of struggle. Well, I don't know. I don't know who my dream 100 customers would be. You were able to come up with 700 potential customers within a whatever, 35 mile radius. It's like they're out there and they don't know you exist yet. So you gotta go get on their radar and be front and center about it. And I thought that was really cool. And then the other takeaway that I wrote down was trying to intentionally be the business owner here. And you're gonna have to go in and pick up the slack if something falls through. But like, like trying to from early on hire other people to go deliver the product to be on the fulfillment side. So you can be the marketing arm, the administrative arm that you need to be to kind of position the brand and move it forward and go out and, you know, land bigger and bigger events and continue to grow that way. So I think it's really cool. Again, phonepartyallstars.com you can find Tim over there. Your free listener bonus this week is my local marketing checklist. We talked about a few local marketing ideas. Inside this Checklist you'll find 10 proven ideas to get more lead flow to your local business. You can download that for free at the Show Notes for this episode Sidehustlenation.com Tim which is shocking after 650 episodes that Tim was available. I don't know. I'm sure we've had another Tim, but who knows? Side hustlenation.com Tim or just follow the Show Notes link in the episode description. It'll get you right over there. Big thanks to Tim for sharing his insight. Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. Side hustlenation.com deals is where you'll find all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. Fire off that text message to that friend of yours who might appreciate a little money making foam party in their day. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.