While most 18-year-olds are on the fence about going to college or what they want to do with the rest of their lives, California State University, Bakersfield student, Noah Salinas, is quite the entrepreneur already.

Salinas, a communications major with an emphasis in public relations, decided to start her own photo booth company called Boomshakalaka. According to their website, their missions is “to make your event ‘The Event.’”

How did something like this come about?

“My little sister wanted to have a really big thirteenth birthday party. So, my mom, dad and I – We kinda put together this not-so-professional photo booth, but we saw how much the kids loved it,” said Salinas.

It was such a success that night that she decided to take it a step further. With the help of her boyfriend and her spreading the word about their new idea, she said “it just kind of took off from there.”

She has always had an interest in photography, but hadn’t necessarily devoted her time to it. In this case, it was more about entrepreuring.

“I never thought it would be so successful, but I knew if I wanted it to grow quickly, I couldn’t just hand out fliers,” she said.

She contacted elementary schools and high schools, in case they wanted to use it for proms and also checked with businesses to see if they wanted to use it for their Christmas parties. Salinas adds that it is a lot of work.

Although her boyfriend, Ben Ward, is her business partner, Salinas still has her hands in everything that goes on. A pretty easy-going guy, he was willing to go along with the idea. Of course, that wasn’t to say, questions didn’t arise, he just wanted to make sure they had a product that was presentable. Once they had everything figured out, and with the help of Noah’s family, he was “all for it.”

“Noah is one of the hardest working people I know,” said Ward. “We’re both good at different things, you know?” He explained that he’s better with the mechanical side of things and building the product they needed. While Salinas helped him with that, her tasks really involved the invoicing, as well as helping with the props when they’re hosting an event.

Keeping things up has been the biggest challenge thus far, just because you never know what could happen. That consists of buying more laptops and more props, to ensure that the business continues to run smoothly. If something was to happen, it’s important to have backup. Once, there was an incident where someone spilled wine on the curtain in the photo booth, so they had to take care of that.

While Salinas put a lot of her own money into the company, her parents also helped her a little financially to start out. However, now they are at the point in the business that they can pay everyone back. Financially, that is also something that they don’t want clients to worry about either.

“We just want to be affordable to everybody,” Salinas said. She also wants people to know that they’ll get everything for their money and will enjoy their time with the product.

As for her favorite project, she really likes celebrating the older birthdays of those in their 70’s and 80’s. “Seeing grandmas and grandpas go in there is so funny, because all of that is new to them,” seeing the technology that is used to take photos.

The business has also branched out from Bakersfield, going to other cities, such as Santa Clarita, Long Beach and even Los Angeles. Though, there is a small travel fee.

Their newest trend is the Hashtag Printer, which allows guests at the party to hashtag a picture, upload it to Instagram or Twitter and allows you to print it out in just a few seconds. It is also one of the few photo booths in California to do that.

Salinas has learned a lot about that it’s one thing to learn about communicating at school, but it’s another when you’re actually putting it into practice.
“Everything I have learned about interpersonal and intercultural skills has defiantly benefited me when it comes to meeting with clients. Clients can be very interesting, and you need to be capable to always make them happy.”

The business takes up a large part of Salinas’ life and time, but she tries to balance it as much as she can between school. She never knows when someone will call about the photo booth, so when her class ends, she’ll immediately call them back. She adds that Google calendar has saved her life, since she can put all of her meetings and events on there to schedule as she goes.

“I have no idea what the future holds for me in five more years, but I hope to only become more and more successful,” said Salinas. “The way the photo booth if going right now, I can’t imagine it slowing down. But, in the future I would like to focus more on a job in PR, while still running the photo booth as a weekend job. I think I might be a workaholic.”

For more information, visit boomboothrentals.com.