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Close To My Heart Events

All right, so our next event I'm gonna ask jill broadband to come up here and tell us about our next awesome awesome event and we just barely had one, not tio yeah just barely is by far one of my favorite events because it is focused on all things creative we do an album retreat weekend so consultants can come join us for two days in salt lake city and we scrapbook we make an entire album in one weekend, so it is constant create twelve hour struck twelve straight hours where your jammies we have tons of treats, we play music and we teach all the fun techniques the newest things used the latest products and create usually at least a ten page, ten spread album in those two days we love to pick themes that means something that might get you out of your normal scrapbook mode and give you things to really consider to journal about and to really tell your story. You can see this is the cover page of this year's album lacking photos, but I'm sure they're on there by now and it was all about y...

our personal story so things you might not have scrapbook before things about your childhood things that you've experienced in your life and that's really what our focus was for this album and it was amazing amy and naomi were there and they can attest to the fact but it is just a party for the weekend, and you really go home with beautiful being going on. We love to party, beautiful book and lots of new techniques, and he also has a comment. Well, you said twelve hours for some of us it was many more because we were waiting to bed after twelve. Yeah, some of us die hards who are we really determined to finish? Our pages were staying up through the night, but it was totally worth it totally worth it. It's totally worth it. All right, so our next event, I want to discuss our regional events. In fact, this one was done in seattle or here in seattle, and so I'm not too long ago, and I personally go out as long as well as sometimes are chief operating officer brian holman, and we get together in regional areas and train and teach their been typically been a three hour event so that people can just have the evening to come and join us and learn some business tips and hopefully, be inspired do a creative project. Well, and we do them all over. This is one that we did in canada not too long ago, even small groups and it just has a different feel than those larger events like album retreat we had over two hundred people and this one is you can see we probably had about forty people there and it's just a really fun way to be connected and to also get a corporate message from home office and really know what new programs and new product we have going out and so we love to do that, and recently I have been traveling like crazy and I've been doing a lot of traveling this one was done in brisbane, australia, and so I'll do like a two week stint and I'll fly over to australia and I'll do seven cities in like nine days all across australia and I absolutely love it. We do have some home office people, they're as well in sydney, brian o'callaghan and he is our general manager there and doesn't excellent job and so he travels with me as long as as well as their events manager meredith blake more and we have such a fun time going around teaching all of our wonderful comm sultan's all throughout australasia, this one was done in auckland, new zealand and so we really dio make sure that we're out there with our comms sultans and helping them stay connected and to be trained we also just recently had a huge convention or second convention in this was in brisbane, australia and so I'm so excited that our next convention is going to be in adelaide and again we had over five hundred consultants there and they were there just tow learn and and it's just so much fun so that leads me to our next massive the event of the year it really is it but you never want to miss this event you really don't this is our ultimate event and it is called our national convention and so we just had a national convention at the disneyland hotel and you can see we just we love beaming these events we love presenting new products we unveil our annual inspirations book and then you know we have all these little secret reveals that we love to dio and we do it in a really fun way so we have different themes and we like to think where amateur after sometimes damage on will dress up and because we don't want to just say and here's this new ribbon and here's this new paper so we make it we try to make it fun and hopefully entertaining for our consultants they seemed to like it on dh so we have those again once a year and we do them all over the united states we've had him in dallas texas and we've done in portland and we're going to be going to orlando florida next and so we try to move those around so that we can reach consultants all over the united states it is such a party I mean talk about like just really building community and just being with your friends like herron pederson was just talking about how she made some of her very best friends and they become roommates and they you know, stay up all night scrapbooking or talking or poring over the catalog it just becomes an amazing experience is well and then another part of course that I love is that we do a lot of creative projects at our convention as well because we're unveiling new products we want them to be able to go home having experience them to actually have finished projects to make so we fill rooms with this many people and they create right along with us as we give them instruction and give them new products and let them go home with tools and examples not just a beautiful art but of things that then they can put into their business as soon as they hit the ground with this brand new idea book so it's fun mixed with business all the same time yet education entertainment we give away time sometimes surprises tons of giveaways lots of fun that way and then we even another thing that we love to dio is have consultant presenters so we have aa lot as you've seen our consultants are amazing artists and so good at presenting and that's an interesting balance to be able to do both of those but they do it so well that we love to highlight our consultants at convention and allow them to teach whether it's a business class or creative presentation they do that as well and so it's a great place for us to recognize our top leaders and of course like I mentioned our annual inspiration idea books I mean these are like gold and they're the first people to get eyes on all of our new products line for the coming year and it is I mean really the production teams that usually we try to explain to them the excitement and energy that's going to happen and a lot of times they just don't really get it until they're there because then we'll say and now you have river and and the crowd goes wild on there like standing on women's they're breaking out over ribbon our paper or stamp designs I mean it's just really is incredible when we announced our rolling carry all you I mean the screaming and the room was deafening but it was so awesome you know, until the excitement and just that energy there's nothing quite like it we give you a lot of great local items this was our convention bag that year, we design our own bags and we have tons and tons and tons of give away. So you definitely make your money back in both education experience, fun and all the products that you walk away from at these events and of course, the team unity that you feel they're, you know, these are some of our this is our director's parade at this convention, and they come in with their signs and everybody knows who their leader is, and you can hear those teams, you know, shouting for their leaders and it's just it's it's just so hard to describe until you're there. But I'm telling you right now, once you're there, you're just like, this is maj family, it really is incredible. And so jill was talking about creative presenters who get up on stage, and then they shared their knowledge and we give them access to the new products, and they have to sign a non disclosure agreement toe not share any of the new products so that they play with the new products are now able to teach and talk about those as we're announcing them. All right, this is probably one of the best highlights for me we have on awards show and we do we get all dolled up and glammed out and we have these beautiful heart pillars and this is for our top sales people and our top team builders and it really is a very special night where we recognize our very top people and have them walk across the stage and let everyone in the room applaud their amazing efforts and all that they dio and we mentioned earlier we actually do have mel consultant shot out shot out there who is also one of our top performing consultants, as you can see it he's holding his two heart pillars there along with two other comm sultan straws. And I mean, we just really have amazing community and of course men are always welcome at close to my heart we would love to have more men, they're scrapbooking with us. It really is fun. One last thing are a couple more things that I wanted to cover on convention because really, this is one of the most special events that we have in the past couple of years we have really tried to focus at convention on raising money for operations, smile and we did a five k fun run throughout disneyland, which was really cool, although they only almost one yeah, but it we have to get up at five thirty in the morning so we could be at the park before no one is there, but really it's incredible. At this last convention we raced twenty two thousand dollars just at the one event. It was incredible on to see, you know, hundreds of our consultants and their families running for such an amazing and worthy cause. It really just made us so proud and so grateful that we could contribute in that way to the world. Lastly, we do have a dance party at the end, there's nothing like you know, just we're done it's over let's dance and we love to have a good time, and our ladies just love to have so much fun and it really is so fun we'll get, you know, a line dancing, going and it's, just amazing party. But one thing that I think that is very special about close to my heart and you can definitely see it at convention, and that is our longevity of our consultants are consultants when they join our family. You can see why they want to stay her really long time. I'm recently we've recognized two consultants, karen morris and doubly foreign year, who reached their twenty five year milestone. At close to my heart, it really is incredible what they've been able to do. We did a feature of both of them on our block at make it from your heart dot com. If you'd like to read their stories, their there on our block. But our longevity, we recognize five, ten, fifteen, twenty and now twenty five years, and they really look forward to coming to convention to get that recognition and it's a special place, it really is.