In the early 2000s, Sal Longo was an 18-year-old student working as a weekend delivery guy for a daycare's lone bounce house, which he rented out as a side hustle. By his early 20s, he'd taken the reins and turned his small side hustle into a successful seasonal business. But after a hard pivot during the pandemic, Longo led his company, Busy Bee Jumpers, to become a thriving professional franchise operation focused on high-margin core rentals — bounce houses, water slides, obstacle courses and tents — delivered with a tech-tight, community-driven playbook.

In this Q&A, Longo walks through the college-to-ownership handoff, the "simplify the menu" pivot to core inventory and why franchising beats adding corporate units.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

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How did Busy Bee first come about and what was your original vision when you were running it as a side hustle?

My business partners back then owned two daycares. They bought a bounce house for the daycare and all the parents started asking to rent it. Someone had to do deliveries; that's where I came in at 18. It was a great secondary business for them for several years. When I graduated from college at 22, I asked, Can we put a main focus on this and go from a

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