Founded On Friendship

By Kristy Heger, Co-Founder of Bubblebird

Once in awhile, you meet someone who you just click with. A potential BFF. It’s almost too good to be true. You slowly start sharing parts of yourself to this person, spend more and more time together and eagerly await to see what they will reveal to you. You’ve been down this road before, and unfortunately sometimes that person’s particular brand of crazy and your own (we all have one, right?!) just doesn’t mesh on the bestie level. No problem, we can still be friends but BFF’s are just not in the cards. But sometimes, you both keep revealing your own personal craziness, quirks, likes and dislikes, annoying behaviors, faults, strengths and weaknesses and even though it doesn’t all match up exactly, everything just fits. This is it – a BFF for life. A real true bestie. And you can do anything with a friend like that!  Which is exactly what we did – built our little company from nothing but thin air, an idea, and an unstoppable friendship.

I’ve always had a handful of close, loyal friends. Some came and went, others have been around for many years. However, as an adult I had never had a BFF. That one person that would also list me as their BFF. Until I met Angelica. She lives a few houses away from me, but for whatever reason, our paths just didn’t cross until two years ago when we happened to co-chair the book fair at our kids’ school. One day she says, “I really enjoy working with you.” I immediately tell her the same, and we slowly began the friend-dance where you test the waters to see what kind of friend you have found in the other. I have to say, it didn’t take long for us to realize we were destined to be BFF’s. The kind of BFF’s where you can really count on each other.

One morning as we were sitting having coffee enjoying our new friendship, we got on the topic of how well we work together. We also both admitted that we wouldn’t mind exploring some other kind of work – not going back to the jobs we both left when we became stay at home moms (she was a nurse and I was a teacher). We talked about starting a business together. We discussed dog-walking (too much work and my own dog is a hot mess on the leash), cupcakes (baking is not a strong suit for either of us), and a few other ideas that didn’t stick. Then she throws out the IDEA – the one that ultimately stuck. Bath bombs!! Her daughter had received one as a gift one time and loved it. Quickly we got side-tracked on some other subject the way besties do.

When I sent her a text later that day about the difficulties of finding citric acid in our local stores (a main ingredient for bath bombs), she responded with, “Why are you looking for citric acid?” to which I responded with “duh, because we decided to start a bath bomb company” and that was that! For whatever reason this particular idea took on a life of its own and we quickly discovered that this could be a legit business. What came next was a mixture of ups and downs, trial and error, roadblocks and triumphs, and a lot of plain hard work – things that we go through for almost any worthwhile endeavor.

People are often impressed how much we have accomplished with our little BlissBerryBath business in such a short amount of time. Our secret? Our unbreakable, unstoppable, unconditional, friendship. This is the absolute truth and I’ve said more times than I can count, that if I had been doing this on my own, I would have given up a long time ago. In our journey of building this company, we’ve laughed, cried, laughed until we cried, seen one another at our best and worst, and come though it all because we were there for each other. So while I am so grateful to be the co-owner of our company, I am even more grateful that I am doing it all alongside my friend, my true best friend. Ours really is a company founded on friendship and we can’t wait to see what’s next.