What to expect at AMBC’s epic event, October 27-29
You’ve heard buzz about it for months now. You’ve read e-blasts, seen the schedule, and started to make plans. Many of you have already booked your tickets and made your reservations. You’re excited. And so are we!
AMBC’s October event in Niagara Falls is going to be like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. It’s more than a traditional regional meeting; it’s more than a weekend workshop. It’s a full-on whopbanger of a weekend, packed with hands-on labs, brand new classes, seminars, one-on-one coaching, demonstrations, vendors, immersion in an innovative and industry-leading store, a Niagara Falls tour, and much, much more! It’s a weekend designed to give you a clearer picture of the future of our industry … and to prepare you for it.
The fact is, friends, our industry is changing fast. Our customers and their needs are very different than what they were even just a few years ago. And, as our industry shifts, so must our business models, mindsets, and profit centers.
We, the board of directors and staff of AMBC, are here to guide you toward what we know is a very bright future for our member stores. We want to show you how to harness cutting-edge current and future technology to bring your businesses to new heights. We want to demonstrate the shared office concept—a model toward which we see many of our members heading. We want to prove to you why you should adopt relationship-based business practices instead of transaction-based ones. And we want to reassure you that, with the right tools, mentality, and drive, you can march into the future with confidence and excellence.
We share what we can on the AMBC blog, in articles in MBC Today, in guest presentations at point-of-sale training weekends, in seminars at industry events and summits, and in countless one-on-one discussion, calls, and store visits with you, our members and our friends. But there’s nothing like getting together in a big group for a hands-on, roll up our sleeves, talk it out, hash it out, see for yourself weekend together to witness, in one our industry’s most outstanding and forward-thinking stores, what the future looks like and how you can get there.
Our gracious and unparalleled hosts, Seema and Fahim Mojawalla, have been preparing for months to welcome our industry’s leaders, trendsetters, veterans and newbies alike to their fabulous location, Island Ship Center, in Grand Island, New York. They’ve recently completed a humongous expansion, adding a warehouse, a boutique, and a private membership-based business center with a wall full of more mailboxes than most of us could dream of. That, coupled with a rebrand, a renovation, and a ridiculous capacity to identify trends and work proactively toward the next big thing, this power couple have created a state-of-the-art, future-centric operation that everyone in our industry needs to experience firsthand.
Just for this event, we’re collaborating with a bunch of guest presenters to bring you sessions on how to get the most out of your store lease and a better deal from your landlord, community-focused marketing action plans, the shared office concept, digital mailboxes, getting more scanning and archiving business, basic print design made easy, how to think of freight as “just a bigger box” and use your existing software to get more freight customers, anti-static merchandising, and social media strategies that get results (including “StorySelling,” how authentic stories, conversations, excellence, and generosity are so incredibly important). And, yes, Fahim and I will present our newest #FahimFix and #AskUncleMarty collaboration, Get Social!, which we debuted this year at the New York City PostalMate weekend.
Bring your laptops and tablets because we’re going to have hands-on labs, helping you one-on-one to get your social media set up, tweaked, and analyzed to help you attract the windfall of business that it has the potential to harness. We don’t want you to just listen at this event. We want to hold your hands and work with you as you take steps, right then and there, to grow and blossom your online presence.
There will be a logo sharing workshop, so bring your marketing materials to discuss what’s working, what can be updated, share suggestions and success stories, and help each other make simple changes that generate big returns. We’ll also show you how that mountain—graphic design—that’s kept you just out of reach of some major printing jobs is actually just a little ant hill. We have some new tools to share that you’re certain to be very excited about!
We’re even bringing in real life millennials to show you exactly why you need to become familiar with the millennial mindset. Pay close attention and learn why this unique, ubiquitous generation—now the largest spending group in the United States—is one you absolutely must understand and embrace to power your business forward.
Vendors and sponsors for the event include FedEx, UPS, PC Synergy (the makers of PostalMate), ShipRite, SupplySide, Pacific Office Automation, FotoZoomer, Anytime Mailbox, iPostal1, Kubox, ESR Commercial, Ship and Insure, Bloomhouse Distributors, Avanti, and W.B. Mason. You’ll see your favorite industry peeps there, including the whole AMBC gang, lots of vendor reps, and a whole gamut of outstanding store owners that you know, follow, admire, and trust.
Because we’re in Niagara Falls, our ever-giving hosts have arranged a Saturday night personal tour of the falls for us, including a trip on the world-famous Maid of the Mist. That’s right, you get to go on a boat that takes you right up to the base of Niagara Falls! (Don’t worry, ponchos are provided.) All of the meals for the weekend have been locally sourced from small businesses and restaurants that Seema and Fahim work closely with. They want to show us the best of the best in their area, and our mouths are watering already!
And the hotel is stellar: Four Points by Sheraton in Niagara Falls, set on the banks of the Niagara River with unbeatable rates that we’ve negotiated in the AMBC block. Why not plan to stay an extra few days to take in the magic of the area … and digest all of the great things you’ve absorbed over the weekend.
As if all of this weren’t enough, to push the event completely over the top, Steve Merrick of SRM Spirit Group, the leading business coach in the mail and business center industry, will be giving free 30-minute one-on-one store consultations throughout the weekend. Though free, time slots for these professional coaching sessions are very limited. So, ask about availability today! We’ll have a waiting list.
Truly, AMBC’s Niagara Falls event in October is going to be epic. The entire AMBC board of directors and staff will be there, all bringing everything we can to provide as much value to our members as possible. We’re pouring our hearts into this … and we can’t wait to see you there!
There are still a few attendee slots open, though we expect the weekend to sell out soon. So, don’t wait! Sign up today. Contact kim@ambc.org for details.
For more information and a full schedule, please visit our official event page.
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Marty Johnson, AMBC Director of Marketing | askunclemarty.com
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Originally published in MBC Today Volume 19, Issue 5 (September / October 2017)
Source: AMBC Blog
Source: AMBC Blog