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

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!

CES sans me.

First time in many years I won't be in Las Vegas for CES techno-geek-mania. But I will be following as many streams and updates as I can this next week to keep the info coming as to what's hot, what's a flop and how the industry sees things evolving for 2012. I have a few contacts there I'll be leaning on for personal updates, so expect some good stories, too. I love this time of year. Minus the bags full of brochures, USB memory sticks and my Nikon D90 full of pictures, I'll do as best as I can to keep the news interesting and fresh! Stay with me on this...

1-800-NOT-COOL

Remember when it was neat to see a clever vanity phone number? Like back in the 1980s? We caution our franchisees against this practice on their online media for a few reasons...

It's tough to type the vanity name into a phone these days because many new phones don't correlate the letters to the numbers on the keys anymore. The old Ma Bell standard of knowing a phone number by its "exchange name" is gone, and thus the need for the letters on the keys. If you're at a loss (or just too young) to know what I'm talking about, see this... (exchange names explained) My phone number growing up began with OVERBROOK.

People can't relate to the letters because even SMS texting has gone away from being a number-key driven activity. Our SIGNARAMA stores were very used to claiming "7446" as their last four digits because that equates to "SIGN."  Neat if you knew that or could figure it out, but most customers can't make that leap these days, so why ask them to?

Have a look at your website, email signature files, heck, redo your printed literature to reflect what people know and do today. Use the numbers not the letters. The vanity phone number concept has lost its cool.