written by Ben Alexander, January 2014

The only physical manifestation of our company is a balloon artist in a restaurant making a balloon for a child. After the customer goes home with a cool balloon there is no evidence that we were ever there other than our promo poster on the door.

We don’t have any storefronts or billboards next to the highways, no trucks or warehouses filled with product, no lasting “widget” that will be sold at yard sales and later discarded in landfills and left to rust.

We are a memory in the minds of children everywhere, something they will recall with vague fondness when they become adults….  

Balloon Distractions is a virtual business, a business of information, ideas and memories.

It all started as a rough idea in my mind in 2003, through training systems that idea has been multiplied in the minds of hundreds of people across the United States, as well as information stored in the ones and zeros of our software in order to organize tens of thousands of bookings each year.  

The most expensive component of our business has been our online scheduling program and our training / orientation interface. Both of these are the most effective way to spread information across time and distance, across 4 time zones, to pursue a common goal.  

With the ongoing evolution of technology there will be more businesses that have little to no physical assets, with software that is parked on servers that are rented on an as-needed basis.

Is there a limit to these “constructs of the mind”? 

As a student of economics I’m going to theorize that there are NO limits to how many different ways we will find to monetize the movement of information in the global economy. Just as Twitter, Facebook and E-harmony started as ideas there will be hundreds and thousands of “mental constructs” that create wealth in the future.