Today we’d like to introduce you to Val Gwyn.
Hi Val, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Hello! Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share! Back in 2014, I started working for a birthday party company because I always had a dream to entertain kids with genuine magic the same kind that I experienced once upon a time with characters such as Mary Poppins and Alice in the Wonderland. While doing one of the company’s gigs, one of the parents in the event said she appreciated my attention to detail on some of the interactions with the kids and kindly mentioned that she could see me running my own business and eventually have my own team of talented individuals alongside me. I was 22 at the time and wasn’t sure how I would even start my own business, but after being typecasted into just one character for a while (if the character wasn’t booked, there was no work), I knew I had to make a change. By 2017, I had been nannying for six years or so, and I had been nannying for a new family with one three years old daughter for a couple of months. She was the sweetest and her mom really wanted to give her a Princess for her birthday party; I showed her my costumes and I had expressed that I used to work for birthday party companies before. She got so excited and asked me if I could do it for her. I gladly accepted! During the party, the both parents were thankful for the event and the father even called me “The Nanny Princess”, which had a good ring to it and I took the name on to officially start my business, which eventually grew to being named “The Nanny Character”.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The first year was kind of slow and steady. In 2018, my now husband and I got engaged, and we started our wedding planning process. I did a few events during the year, but it was still just me and it was gradual. In 2019, my husband and I got married, and we wanted to focus on our first year as a married couple together, but I still did a few birthday parties here and there. In 2020 and 2021, we didn’t know the pandemic was going to be a part of our new normal and it did unfortunately stopped things very suddenly. I only got to do a couple of parties during those years, but what made the kiss very happy is to receive lots of personal birthday video telegrams during those tough circumstances. Once 2022 hit, I started working hard on my business website and promoting as much as possible in different events that I thankfully got booked in. Currently, my team and I have overbuild our goal and we’re growing exponentially!
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
As a Certified CPR/AED Professional Full Time Nanny, my research is heavily focused on the trends that kids like, games that are fun to do, and new crafts to create and expand their imagination in. I now have over a decade or so experience of working with many different families and kids of all ages. My husband and I do eventually would like our own children and he brags that I may have parenting in the bag; although that is a generous compliment, I do still believe our own experience will be our own to experience. In the meantime, my continuous dream is that the business will continue to get bigger while our family gets bigger. We truly support each other in our careers and dreams ❤️
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
Between 2017 to 2019, it used to be just tiny me, and during the pandemic, nothing much was happening except for the rare social distancing event or lots of the video telegrams. Now, there’s about 10 or so people in my team and I’m always welcome to add more if the amount of traffic is heavy. So far, that has been the case with our Halloween/Harvest events being the biggest ones yet and needing lots of many different performers, but it also helps to have built a wonderful networking community throughout this year. If anybody out there is interested in joining our team or would like to be networking partners, please feel free to send me a message to my Instagram @thenannycharacter
Happy Holidays and to thank you again for the opportunity.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bark.com/en/us/company/the-nanny-character/vqoRJ/
- Instagram: thenannycharacter
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thenannycharacter
Image Credits
Photo Credits by Joshua Gwyn
