How Enjoy Your Party Founder and CEO Rosanna Morlando Turned a Part-Time Business Into a Full-Fledged Company

Enjoy Your Party founder and CEO Rosanna Morlando didn’t have the luxury of staying home with her two young children and choosing to not work. And while starting a company might sound like a counterintuitive way for a mother to be more active in her children's lives, it was the only option Morlando found suitable. Having worked in hospitality and catering for most of her career, she felt confident that the flexibility and autonomy of starting her own business would give her more time to focus on her children.

“It’s very difficult for a mom at any age to take care of her family,” said Morlando. “As a mother, you want to be home to teach your own children, you want that career and you want to make enough money to give them the kind of life they deserve. But mostly, you want to keep the family together. That’s a true woman, if you ask me. It’s a lot of hard work and sacrifice and there’s no such thing as the perfect balance.”

Enjoy Your Party, a professional staffing service for parties and events, was founded in 1996, starting in a home office Morlando set up at her house. Today, around 350 individuals are employed by Enjoy Your Party, who are trusted to work important events such as weddings and business gatherings. Morlando’s first five employees are still with the agency.

Motherhood sparked something in Morlando that would prove to be the key to her success: the ability to focus all her attention on the well-being of her clients while servicing their events. As Morlando would say, it’s important to think beyond yourself. This mission to put clients first is the drive behind Enjoy Your Party’s growth and sustainability. To Morlando and her team, the role you occupy doesn’t determine how helpful you will or won’t be in given situations. If you’re a chef and you see someone needs a napkin, you get them a napkin. There’s no room for too much pride at Enjoy Your Party.

This philosophy of generosity and compassion seeped into her family life, too.

“The kids pitched in when I wasn’t at home, and I didn’t even have to ask,” said Morlando. “If I wasn’t home to cook, they started cooking. They saw how hard I was working, and stepped up to help me take care of things. It’s not about one person, it’s about the family.”

Now, Morlando’s children, Patrick and Maria, help run the family business, serving as vice president and director of training development, respectively.

“At first, it was just a part-time business where I could work on the weekends,” said Morlando, as she reflected on the growth of Enjoy Your Party. “It evolved into something I never would have imagined. But still, it was a sacrifice. As the business grew, I couldn’t always get to those games and Girl Scouts meetings. And now, I try to make it easier for others. If someone calls me because their child is sick, I totally understand. I always tell my employees that family comes first. We just make do.”