Long Island doctor with a popular side hustle as a balloon artist – Brandon Axelrod, AKA “Doctor Brandini” – is currently drowning in $400,000 in student loan debt. However, he’s seeking to use his skills as a balloon-twister to claw his way back to financial freedom, with a little help from social media and late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert.
Axelrod, a Commack native, has been using his viral social media videos showcasing his balloon art to help raise the money to get him out of debt; to that end, he attracted the attention of Colbert after making a balloon caricature in his likeness that he posted on his Instagram page.
“Clearly, I gotta help this guy out,” the host of CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” responded. “He’s a frontline responder doing critical work for society, but mostly because his balloon version of me has a waistline that is snatched.”
To that end, Colbert plugged Axelrod on his program, sharing his name and links to his social media accounts.
Axelrod, 27, is a graduate of Stony Brook School of Dental Medicine, and is currently a New York City surgical resident. And when he’s not busy taking out wisdom teeth, fixing broken jaws, or removing tumors from his patients’ mouths, he’s diving into the world of balloon art, something that he’s been obsessed with since a young age.
He was first inspired to het into balloon art after a early-age visit to a dentist, who took his mind off his broken tooth by performing a magic trick for him. Inspired, he looked for his own way to create wonder, and that eventually led him to balloons, something he says he hopes to one day incorporate into his own future dental practice.
Now a while, he performed at birthday parties and local events on his native Long Island under the name “Doctor Brandini,” twisting balloons into just about anything you can imagine- a life-size replica of rapper Bad Bunny, Disney characters, Peppa Pig and SpongeBob, just to name a few.
However, with the majority of his time being taken up by his new career, Axelrod pursued his hobby the only way he could- making videos in his apartment for social media, and to that end, he has gained quite a following. Now, he’s hoping to monetize his videos to help pay down his crippling student debt, and it’s slowly but surely starting to pay off, with revenue from TikTok now starting to trickle in.
“This month’s loan payment was a little better,” he said.
