Regional Meetings 2014

You're traveling to visit us?

Yes we are! So far, 18 cities are on the list for first quarter Regional Meeting visits. Scott Mast and I, along with local support staff will be hosting meetings for franchisees of all brands. Your Regional Vice President and their team will be providing the details as to when and where.

Our tour will include visits to franchisee locations before and after the meetings. We both are very involved with social media, you can be sure we will be posting plenty of pictures and proof of our travels on Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Instagram!  

For what?

Our Regional Meeting swing will include information on local happenings, updates on suppliers, Training and education for franchisees and their staff, World Expo Preview, social media tips and examples and roundtable discussions. Most meetings are approximately three hours long. If meetings coincide with mealtime, we'll have food and drinks! A fantastic way to start your 2014 business year would be to make sure you're in attendance when your Regional Meeting comes to town.

"Rah-rah" high-fiving corporate propaganda?

Nope, plenty of to-the-point relevant examples that we know can help your business. 

Come and see for yourself!

-dm

Excited to meet!

Line 'em up! We are two events into a five meeting swing of Super Regional Meetings this summer. Dallas and Orlando are in the log, Los Angeles, Chicago and NY/NJ lie ahead. These are fantastic meetings for us to get the team together and share what's new among our franchisees. If you haven't made the first two meetings and you're considering or already registered for the ones coming up, here's what you can expect...

• News and updates for your brand. Our Marketing team, coupled with the Advertising and Marketing fund boards for SIGNARAMA and EmbroidMe have exciting announcements for you. See it, learn about them and get your questions answered in person. This is HUGE!


• Suppliers - A "mini" trade show from prominent suppliers dominates the first half day of your Super Regional Meeting experience. New material and product vendors, your business management software folks (Trade Only and SignVox) will all be there. Get great news and info on up and coming advantages you enjoy by being a part of a large organization.


• Your peers - It's amazing to see how far others have taken the same concept you learned in our Training School. What's working best, what's new and surging forward? Also as important but sometimes overlooked is what's NOT working. Share and participate in roundtable discussions, meals and after-hours activities with fellow franchisees. This to many is their best reason to attend.


• Distance - Shhh. I'm parting with a UFG secret here. We know you're most likely to absorb new ideas when you climb out of the day-to-day events in your store. If you can mentally distance yourself from your projects for a day or two, you'll open yourself up to better methods and plans to succeed. It happens most to those that ride the fence, wondering until the last minute if they should attend. I say it's these franchisees that benefit greatly. It takes some doing to say, 'Yes." Consider the stale alternative of not putting yourself where you could grab tips and new systems to build on. It's worth your time to attend the meetings that are coming to your region!

We have a full schedule of items on each city's agenda, that much I can promise. This series of meetings will allow you to keep rolling forward towards your 2013 goals, for which you have less than 6 months left. I won't be touring with the band this summer, so your postings to social sites and photos shared with our Marketing team will tell the story. Apparently I'm in the "on deck" circle, having been recently tapped to lead the effort to produce World Expo 2014 in Orlando. I'm happy to be spearheading the massive effort behind our Expo again. I'll bring new ideas, format changes and some of the fun and excitement that belong at our events. If you've been with us awhile, you know how it works. Many of your suggestions fuel the content for World Expo, speakers, sessions, events. etc. If you enjoyed San Antonio in 2006, Disney in 2008 or Caesar's Palace in 2009, you're already looking for the REGISTER NOW button to click! We will have that up and live soon so you can plan to be in Orlando during the final week of May. Now do you understand why we are so excited to meet?

It's a geat time to be growing a business - allow our traveling show of support services to help your efforts.

-dm

Put it out there.

Ever been involved with a project that's time has come?

Maybe you've worked hard to place a new idea in the heads of your superiors, and today is your presentation. The official introduction of your plan. Maybe you have children? This could be their recital, the performance that shows the instructor, your peers and their friends what they've been practicing. It's as much your "coming out" as it is theirs, you want it to go perfectly and have them show well. This is after all, an outcropping of your efforts. Another example? I run. I prepare with a goal, an event, a date, and an intended outcome. So for me, it's race day. If you do well, no one can ever take your time from you - it stays as a testament to your preparation, skill and ability to perform when it counts. This is the feeling I had on my trip to Australia. The EmbroidMe VISION project is ready to use. It's taken many months to get to this place. What started as an idea for improvement is now here for the franchisees to see and embrace. They've seen and heard all about it, how could they not. We touted it as the system of the future at last year's Expo in Las Vegas. Back then, the prognosis was that we'd have most of it done for the Expo and release it slowly in June. Improvements, some obstacles and the daunting migration of EMeBOSS data kept us from releasing any viable version in 2012. The delay was an annoyance to some, but most understood that we have been adding to and improving the system all the way since April's Expo, so the vibe was still "we have the right idea and the plan is working."

The Regional Meeting swing in Australia was loosely in place in the beginning of December when Evan Foster, National Director, visited Florida for our year end meetings. We determined that this system would be ready to launch, so we decided to include this as the "meat" of the four meetings. I had planned on going over and having someone from Trade Only accompany me for the demos. It went back and forth, Martin Varley or Tracey Peyton, one of these two would be the best presenters of the system. Tracey was giving the nod a mere three days before the trip began, which made for some interesting prep and dialogue on a very long journey over the Pacific. This was Tracey's first trip to Australia and what a schedule we had for her. Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, all in 6 days with a day on each side for travel and some time adjustment. She really leaned into the assignment, putting together four stellar demonstrations across Australia. We answered questions, shored up concerns about cloud computing and security and showed new capabilities. We left each city with our franchisees impressed and ready to adopt the VISION system. In all but one location we had a 100% sign-up percentage. This trip was a success on two fronts. The software was the star, it will allow the stores to better manage and promote their businesses. We also made excellent connections face to face with some fantastic people. Our Expos allow for franchisees to interact with the Corporate people, but store visits and an appreciation for what happens each day in their lives is paramount. I love life in the field ~ for this reason.

I am not the sole person responsible for the EmbroidMe VISION system. For maybe the first time ever on a project of this type, we pooled our resources to include corporate, training, field and franchisees to build and sharpen the deliverable. This was exciting because I got to pull the wraps off in front of excited customers who will use it everyday. I know most of the franchisees, so the intro and dialogue was easy. I like to bring a human side to the presentations, telling the inside story of how the ideas and development crafted what we had to introduce.I think people appreciate and deserve that. Credibility soars when you expose your challenges and frailties next to your successes. People understand. They believe. Then they trust.

All the work and thoughts culminate in that moment when you take that step forward and put it out there. Would it fall on welcome ears? Had our planning and year-plus of work on VISION hit the mark? The only way to know would be to dedicate the time and resources to show the franchisees in person. The response was very enthusiastic. Our store owners saw the value in pressing forward with this new venture which made the tightly-scheduled trip more enjoyable along the way. Special mention to franchisees that extended their hospitality to us on their weekends and free time. I have a wonderful collection of friends that are due my best hospitality when they visit Florida. Yes, this is you, Pete and Margie Gardner, Karren and Matt Fitzpatrick.

I went around the world in a week. I did my part and helped make the Regional Meetings interesting for our franchisees. The project doesn't end with this tour of Australia. We push a familiar plan into place now, the launch phase. Training and implementation. This we will do well, our past experiences have been good here, this will be duplication of that success. When you're in the midst of the tough stuff on a project of this size, you wish for the day that people see and appreciate what you've done. My day came, four different times in four different cities! It's forward from here.

 

- dm

ASI Orlando

I was impressed by the size and scope of the ASI show this past week in Orlando. This organization's following encompasses so many people from so many industries - it is worthy to see in person how big ASI is. There are plenty of suppliers at the centerpiece event, a trade show. Hundreds of comapnies that brought their products to hopefully "wow" attendees, who lined up and down every aisle to see what was new. I saw things I easily recognized as promo items - plenty of pens, mousepads, keychains, etc. The "expected" giveaways known to be popular in the promotional product industry. Then I saw sign companies, umbrellas, kitchen knives, high-end engraved products, and very impressive incentive gifts. There was training avaiable on the trade show floor and at breakout events happening concurrent to the vendor show. Tony Robbins, famed motivational speaker, was giving an 8 hour boot camp. Bill O'Reilly was a keynote speaker. ASI has it's own certification system, broken into two levels mirroring college achievements. The BASI (Bachelors) and MASI (Masters) track of advertising specialties competency classes were happening throughout the event. The organization of ASI's event was well done, they have a very powerful brand. It's notable to see how many of our franchisees came to participate in piggyback events we hosted at the show. We had an EmbroidMe Regional Meeting, a "messaging platform" meeting to focus and create a newer tagline and direction for the brand's advertising and a software demo for EmbroidMe franchisees. Plan Ahead Events franchisees came to see the trade show, participate in a dinner sponsored by Hilton Hotels and attend meetings for their brand. Co-branding our meetings with industry shows worked well... I would like to see us do more in this vein. The blend of experiences that occur in a short but busy few days helps franchisees and franchisor alike.

CES Day One.

It's on! After last night's keynote speech with Steve Ballmer, CES 2012 opens later this morning in Las Vegas. I'm tweeting and retweeting goodies the next few days @DaveAtUFG. Follow along, it's going to be good!