Last week, on Facebook and other social media channels, I made a big announcement. My husband and I sold our real estate photography business. This had been so, on paper, for about a month, but last week we drew open the curtain for everyone to see. Though I am working hard to offload all my Spot On Images duties on the new owner, we’re not quite there, yet – but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel is not the headlamp of an oncoming train.
Spot On Images was the brainchild of my husband. I was only along for the ride. I remember when Bill pitched the idea. I was not exactly enthusiastic and it hurt his feelings, but we’d been married for almost a quarter of a century by then and I knew the routine. He has great money-making ideas, but his visionary capabilities fail to embrace the drudgery and hysteria of supporting said enterprises. Though he realized it would take more than a camera and a website to make the dream a reality, he really had no clue what would be necessary.
There was a division of labor. He did the photography and managed the money. I did everything else. Everything else was not the fun part. I’ll leave it at that. A couple of years ago I hit a brick wall. Like the rest of the world I was sick and tired of masks, Zoom meetings, vaccines and social distancing. The world was beginning to open back up and I wasn’t looking forward to going back to the grind. I introduced the idea of my memory keeping side gig and Jane Sadek – Memory Keeper was born.
A Juggling Act
Perhaps starting a new business when I already had plenty to do in the one we had might not have been the smartest thing I ever did. My new business had all the growing pains of any new venture and initially I actually had more success than I could handle. That was not good for my marriage, but it didn’t hurt Spot On Images one bit. We’d created a snowball and it was barreling down the mountainside.
At that point, other people might have quit, but Memory Keeping is not just business venture for me. It is my passion. So, while I severely dialed back my Memory Keeping activities, I did just enough to keep the embers warm.
Then we arrived at a crossroad. Spot On Images had outgrown the two-man job we’d created for ourselves. Oh, we’d already hired editors and more photographers, but the company was on a trajectory that needed a five year growth plan, more personnel and more headaches. This wasn’t what we’d signed up for, so we decided to sell.
On the Other Side
As this post is being published this Thursday morning, I will be loading the trunk of our car with luggage. We’re going on a trip. Just a five day jaunt to the Detroit area for a family event, but a world of difference from a couple of years ago. That time I stayed up over night before we left, to nurse the editors through our rush jobs, so I could deliver photos by 4:30 AM and catch our flight. During that trip I missed the opportunity to enjoy one of the top picks on my itinerary, because we ran into a hiccup on an important job.
As far as I know, there’s never been a Memory Keeping emergency, which is one of the best things about my new career. A hallmark of any business related to real estate is drama. In photography we were once removed from the insanity I endured as an agent, but because we cared about our clientele, their drama our emergencies. If someone has a Memory Keeping emergency, then I’m not their Memory Keeper. I am out of the emergency business.
While I will need to support the new SOI owner during the weeks to come, my primary focus will be Memory Keeping. I have so many exciting plans. I’m in the middle of a huge sorting job for one client and will be picking up my next scrapbooking project when I get home. I’m going to offload the SOI archive out of my FOREVER account and fill it up with my personal photos and then set up my demo account to share with potential clients. There’s so much training available with FOREVER that I could spend the next year on that, but I will have to restrain myself or I won’t have time for working on my projects or getting the word out that there’s hope for your Memory Messes.
In the future, look for online training, office hours for customer support, a Memory Keeping coaching program and that’s just the beginning of the list of things I want to offer to those of you who want to tackle your Memory Mess. I am so excited, but to make this work, I’m going to need your support. Whenever you hear a friend or family member bemoan their own Memory Messes, I hope you’ll send them to me. I can fix that!!
MEMORY KEEPING 101: FOREVER FOUNDER SHARES HIS WHY
What’s FOREVER?
FOREVER is not yet one of those companies everybody knows about, yet I think a day will come when it will be the go-to place for all things digital-memory-keeping. Until then it’s one of my missions in life to be sure people don’t lose their memories from lack of knowing about FOREVER.
You can’t be around me very long without finding out I care about your photos and have all the tools you need to preserve them for generations to come. That’s especially true if you read this blog.
Why FOREVER?
The founder of FOREVER recently took the time to share the reasons why he has devoted the rest of his life to this company. In this short (4:40 minutes) video he tells what led him to discover the need for the company and why he feels it is such an important tool for anyone and everyone to use.
No one could be more eloquent on this subject, so today, instead of writing a few more hundreds of words, I’m sharing this video. Please take the time to watch it. I think you’ll agree with me, the time has come for FOREVER.
Glen Meakem, Founder & CEO of FOREVER shares his why
So, what do you think? Are you ready to make FOREVER your memories’ home?
MEMORY KEEPING 101: THINK OF IT AS A RED CARPET FOR YOUR PHOTOS
What Do You Have & Where Do You Want It?
When I ask this question, most people have only the vaguest idea of where all their memories are and they really don’t have a really good idea of where they want them to be, but together we come up with a plan to find everything and get it someplace safe for generations to come.
When the bulk of their memories are on traditional media, like photographs, slides, video and such, the answer is easy. It has to be digitized! While there are a number of ways to go about getting from a pile under the bed to organized folders on FOREVER, it’s a pretty straight forward process.
If those memories are on their phone instead, well that’s easy, too. The FOREVER app can upload everything on your phone to your FOREVER storage while you sleep. Then if you like, it will continue to do so into perpetuity, so you never have to worry about losing your photos, even if you lose your phone, it gets stolen or if somebody runs over it.
When those photos are on a computer or hard drive, getting all of that organized on FOREVER was doable, but could be a long drawn out procedure. In truth, the bigger your mess was, the easier it was to transfer. If everything was carefully organized, there was not really any way to transfer all of that organization to FOREVER without doing it all over again. BUT NO MORE!
Valet Is Here!
Valet is a magic carpet ride for your photos. Thousands and thousands of photos can be moved from your hard drive, computer or laptop, with a few clicks of a button. If your photos are nothing but a great big mess, that’s great news! With Valet, they can arrive in FOREVER in nice neat folders, sorted by year and date, with all the duplicates pulled out. However, if your photos and videos are already in nice neat little folders on your device, then FOREVER will just move the whole thing – organization and all into FOREVER – BAM! It’s done!!
What’s even better is that you get to decide what kind of Valet customer you want to be:
Free One Month Trial – If all you want to do is a one time upload from your computer to FOREVER, then this is the route for you. There is no limit to the number of photos you can upload to FOREVER (or download from FOREVER, for that matter), you just have to do it all in 30 days. You can use it to get photos off your computer, off your husband’s computer, off your parent’s computer or wherever. The Valet Trial is associated with your FOREVER account, not a particular device.
Yearly Subscription – If a month is not enough, then how about a year. For only $59.99 you can do all the things mentioned above, but instead of 30 days, you have a 365 of them. That’s pennies a day.
Professional Subscription – If for any reason you have access to more than one FOREVER account, then perhaps you’ll need the professional version. It was designed for professional organizers, but there are other applications as well – such as if you are part of a family, team or other group using FOREVER for a project. The professional subscription is $299.99.
Here’s the good news. You can use your Club Dollars to buy it and it qualifies for the Club Discount. How can you resist?
If Valet sounds like something you’d be interested in, let’s get together and talk about how it can help you. It’s a very exciting product!!
Saving Your Memories, Not Selling a BusinessOpportunity
I remember sometime back in the late 70’s, a friend came by to share a business opportunity. It seems as if the first hour of his presentation was spent describing fantastic vacations, palatial second homes and very expensive cars we were going to have very, very soon. I guess we were supposed to overlook the fact his shoes were worn out and his car was ready for the wrecking yard. Eventually we got him to admit he was there to sign us up for a multi-level marketing company that is now a well known pyramid scheme. We said no thanks and then spent an hour trying to get him out of our house. His parting words, “I’m sorry you didn’t have the vision to understand what I was offering.” We ran into him a few months later and he sheepishly let us know he was pursuing other opportunities.
I’m sure all of us, at some point or another, have been approached by someone who wanted us to join their MLM team. I want you to know there are some great teams out there to join – Tupperware, Melaleuca, Mary Kay, Pampered Chef and so many more. While there have been some bad players in the past, this type of company provides great products, usually at a lower price and they have also been a real boon to women. When the glass ceiling was firmly in place, there were lots and lots of women who were outpacing their male counterparts through network marketing.
Back in the day, most network marketing happened out of the trunk of people’s car. They’d buy up lots of merchandise, so they’d have something to sell you and the more they bought, the more impressive their title would be. There were also lots of parties. You’d go to a friend’s house and their friend would demonstrate a product line. You’d order something so your friend could earn her free product and then a few weeks later it would be delivered, usually with a little pressure for you to have a party, too.
Then along came the world-wide web and network marketing was transformed. Network marketers didn’t have to buy up a bunch of merchandise they might or might not be able to sell. They could drop ship their products to their clients, just like Amazon and E-Bay and Walmart. While many companies still use the party format for marketing their products, there are many more that don’t and it’s not a tool I use.
Today, the biggest difference in retail marketing and network marketing is the way a company chooses to spend it’s marketing dollar. If you’re Walmart or Macy’s or Louis Vuitton, then you’re going to buy up radio and TV spots, have slick ads in print and put brick and mortar storefronts at the local mall. Companies like Mary Kay and Arbonne instead invest in their representatives to spread the word. That’s the way FOREVER and Creative Memories do it.
In spite of this transformation, there are still people who want to know if FOREVER or Creative Memories are MLM’s. So, let me tell you how my business works and then I will tell you how these companies work.
Service is my Primary Product
I am a Memory Keeper. I am offering my service and experience as a life long scrapbooker and part owner of a real estate photography company. I love helping others preserve their memories and along the way I have learned quite a bit about media, how to preserve it and how to share it. I will be happy to make scrapbooks for you and help you organize your photos. You pay me directly for those services. I will be using Creative Memory products in your album. I will also use my new Cricut, stickers from Hobby Lobby and paper from JoAnn’s if I can’t find what I need in the CM line. If we do a digital projects, I will most likely use FOREVER programs like Artisan and Historian as I work on the job, because they are my tools.
If your project is digital and you want to do it yourself, then I will recommend FOREVER products like digitization and permanent storage, to you. If you need these products, then I’m recommending to you the very thing I use for my own projects, because they are, without a doubt, the very best available. Yes, I will make some commission on those purchases, but this is my business and to continue doing what I love to do for others, I need to be able to support my habit, but if you’d rather use another company, go right ahead.
While I want to help you save your memories, I won’t be trying to recruit you to my team. There are CM advisors and FOREVER ambassadors who choose to build their businesses by building a team, but that’s not what I want to do. It takes a lot of time coaching and mentoring to be a good team leader, and your own success is determined by your leadership skills.
My business is based on my scrapbooking and organizational skills, not my recruiting skills. In addition, a team leader should also be modeling the business for your downline and very, very few people have creating scrapbooks and organizing photos for other people as their primary goal. If team building were my goal, I would not split my effort between two companies, but would pour my energies into one company or the other – in my case Creative Memories – but because many people with a memory mess need digital solutions, I offer both.
Now, if you’re going to be spending a significant amount of money (as in thousands) with either company, then I may show you how to get deeper discounts, but it’s because I want to save you money, not because I want to add you to my team. I will actually make less money with you as my team member, than I will if you are a customer, but because my ultimate goal is to preserve your memories and help you share them with others, if I can save you a little money along the way, then that’s what I am going to do.
Every once in a great while a unicorn does come along. You could join one of my companies as a representative to get the discount, fall in love with what they offer and build a very successful business of your own. That’s great! I would support your efforts, as would everyone in the company you chose. That’s why we call it network marketing. We network with our clients and our fellow representatives. The more you do for others, the more successful you become. However, I have photos to organize, scrapbooks to create and people to help save and share their memories. I don’t have time to go unicorn hunting.
Creative Memories
Creative Memories is a part of my life. Along with a lot of other people in the 90’s, I learned those adhesive photo albums I’d been using were actually destroying the very thing I was trying to save. I was soon hooked on a lot more than acid-free, photo-safe albums. I loved stickers and die cuts and paper. (Oh, did I ever love the paper!) I still love scrapbooking and after all these years I know there are no products out there better for what I love.
There have been two Creative Memories and I have been a customer and a representative of both. The first Creative Memories was an MLM. Your success depended on having parties – only they called them home classes, workshops and crops, but you also had to recruit. To keep your consultant designation, you had to purchase a certain amount of inventory you hoped to unload at your events and you had to recruit. Confession, I was dismal at both. I filled up my house with product and I never recruited a soul. That was happening to a lot of people, so for that reason and some others, Creative Memories went bankrupt.
The new CM is completely different. There are no buying quotas to meet and while I can build my own team should I desire to, they are only my team and no one else is benefitting off of them. There are various streams of income I can make based primarily on my sales and the sales of my direct team members, but that’s it. That’s all there is. It is not an MLM.
FOREVER
Forever is a little different and the teams do have various levels, but they are quite limited. The business plan is based first on my own sales to my own customers. They do not pay a membership fee, nor do they have to buy a certain amount within a certain time period. I never have to recruit anyone to promote within the company. I can reach the top commission level on my own.
Should building a team be what someone wants, that’s great and they will receive a tiny portion of sales for their own team members up to 5 levels down, but that’s it. There’s not some big dog at the top of the pyramid making his living off all the people who have ever been joined the company. There is no pyramid, only a short trapezium.
I say a trapezium, because while there are nine levels of compensation with Forever and thousands of ambassadors, a manager only qualifies for a tiny percentage of the sales within their own five level team. In fact, the Senior Executive Ambassador from whom I get most of my training and who I turn to when there’s a problem doesn’t get a penny of my sales. She just loves Forever and wants to help everyone be successful. That’s the culture.
So, if you avoid want to avoid having parties and being recruited, you’re safe with me. If you have a problem with the pyramid-like compensation plans of some of the MLM companies, you’re safe with me. I want you to be my customer, not my team member. I want to help you, not recruit you and I assure you, you can spend a whole lot of money with me and never buy a product from CM or FOREVER. If you have memories that need saving let’s talk. If not, check on my Weekend Report tomorrow and my Travel There post next week!
I started my morning by checking my email and since Memory Keeping is my business, I’m always on the look out for content, something I can post to my social media channels. I’d been writing blog posts the day before, so I really wasn’t looking for another one, but this one found me anyway.
Creative Memories is a Heaven for Crafters
Creative Memories has a blog and that’s where my email took me. If you’re a crafter, you’ll love it. You’ll need all kinds of tools and materials complete the beautiful things the blog features. These particular borders require 11 various items. Each border has 3-4 easy steps (ha), or at least it seems that way, until you figure out that each “easy” step also includes 4-5 steps. You could craft away a morning with these borders.
I have nothing against crafters. I’m happy they have both the skill and the time to do the amazing things they do. Crafters, please let me be your Creative Memories Advisor. I can point you in the direction of a lifetime of craft ideas and sell you everything you’ll need to complete them – including all the totes you need for packing up to go away on that crafting weekend.
Creative Memories is Also a Resource for Memory Keepers
However, crafters have given Memory Keeping a bad name and to be honest, I get a little mad at Creative Memories for obscuring the line between memory keeping and crafting. I get it, crafters who scrapbook are probably going to buy more product than your average person who just wants to save their memories in a traditional album. However, I’m one of those people who embraced the old CM taglines – “Everyone Has a Story to Tell” and “Simple Pages, Completed Albums.” “We Make Scrapbooking Fun,” the phrase on the back of a recent catalog, just doesn’t resonate with me.
So, as I was saying, I looked at the Creative Memories blog and my hair stood on end. Sure, the bear borders are really cute, but I’m not sharing the post on my Facebook feed without a disclaimer. Most of my clients are incredibly busy people who hire me to scrapbook for them. They want an economical answer to their Memory Mess, whether they’re attempting to tackle some of it themselves or they’re turning the whole project over to me. I offer them an affordable album package, which includes all labor and materials, and my clients love the results, but I assure you, none of these borders will be in one of my standard albums. My standard albums are simply beautiful and I can complete them in a couple of weeks, but they’re all Memory Keeping, with only a touch of crafting.
I’m a Devoted Memory Keeper Who Can Also Craft
That being said, if you’re a crafter, go visit the CM blog I mentioned, go to CMTV, soak up their YouTube Channel. There’s a lifetime of crafting there. Get after it. I love it, too.
I want you to know that if you hire me to do your albums for you, I can craft, but I also need you to understand, specialty albums have to cost more. I have stacks and stacks of papers, drawers of punches, boxes of stickers and a variety of other tools on shelves and in baskets. Heck, I even have a Cricut! No matter how simple the album, I find ways to use my toys in quick bites. I am a Closet Crafter, whose day job is Memory Keeping.
However, there’s no package price for a specialty album. I work on a time and materials basis, keeping track of every minute and every sticker. Elaborate titles and borders will fill every page, with thick layers of beautifully crafted paper enhancements. It’s the perfect gift for a bride or a new mother. It’s a vacation album you’ll cherish. However, the timeline for it could be anywhere from a month to six weeks. The materials used will add up, but it will be the time which takes the biggest bite of your budget.
Back to Basics
Here’s the bottom line. Memory Keeping does not require crafting skills. If you want to do this yourself. I promise you can do it. If you’re looking for an affordable way to get someone else to do it for you, I’m your girl. At the same time, if you are a crafter, there just aren’t any projects out there as meaningful as Memory Keeping.
In other words, Memory Keeping is job one, whether you do it or I do. Crafting is optional! So give me a call and lets get busy saving your memories!!
I hope Memory Keepers, Crafters and Travelers will keep coming back. Tomorrow I’ll have The Weekend Report, next Wednesday we’ll be traveling and then a week from now I’ll be keeping more memories.
Most people in the world wouldn’t recognize this car, yet it’s one of the best there is. It also is not a Ford, Chevy or Chrysler. Companies and politicians hustle for name recognition, because when most of us are in a pinch, we go for what we know. But I ask you – is that the best way to make a decision? Not if you want a luxury sports car. And certainly not if you’re about to digitize your memories.
If someone would deliver this car to your home, would you quibble over what the label said? Chances are you wouldn’t. You’d just want to grab the keys and roll. If you can get the best digitization service for the same price as a mediocre one, wouldn’t you want the best? When it comes to Memory Keeping, there are a lot of names which might immediately come to mind, but does that mean they are the best or does it just mean they have the biggest advertising budget?
The digital memory keeping company I work with, Forever, is not a household name. When it comes to digitization, there is another company which is on the radio and TV all the time with their boxes. Most people would recognize their name, but I’m not going to say it. There’s also another company which promotes their boxes as being in the same league, but are they? (And what about that company you saw in a strip center or some guy in your networking group that turns your photos into video? Talk about not in the same league!)
So, when these other digitization box companies are more familiar to most households, why should you go with Forever? I’m glad you asked!
Level of Care
While we’re on the subject of cars, think about the Mercedes Benz AMG line. You may not even know it stands for Aufrecht, Melcher and Großaspach, but chances are you have a clue those letters mean you’re looking at a Mercedes Benz superior to those which don’t have that designation. Among the reasons it’s better is the tag which shows who built your car over a matter of days, as opposed to other cars which are built on an assembly line by multiple people.
When it comes to digitization, those other guys are one-and-done. They slap a video or film in the machine, run it through and move on to the next one. That’s not the case at Forever. Eric Napier, Forever’s Director of Digitization explains the difference, “FOREVER will run each tape or film 2-3 times to get the best capture possible, edit the dead spots, clean up the tracking, video and audio as much as possible. We also provide editing, batch color correction and photo repair services that other companies don’t offer.”
Sounds kind of like the difference in a MB AMG and a Ford Pickup doesn’t it. A Ford Pickup is a great vehicle. It’s just not made with the level of care of a MB AMG. And here’s where my analogy falls apart. Regardless of which vehicle you might want, most of us can’t afford an MB AMG, but we might squeeze together enough for the Ford Pickup. But if you could pay the same for both, which would you choose? (Yes, if you own a ranch or a farm, you’ll go for the pickup truck, but you know what I mean.)
In the world of digitization, the sticker price of our small digitization box is virtually the same as the one-and-doners – in fact, there was a two cent difference on the day I checked. Now which digitization box would you prefer? Prices are subject to change and there are different specials going on at any given time, but generally, you are going to find that FOREVER and those guys are going to be in the same ballpark price wise, but FOREVER will always be a world apart in the level of care they offer.
Where’s My Stuff?
On the front end of the service, all the box services look a lot alike. They ship you a box. You fill it and send it back to them. Then your stuff is digitized. Each service does things a little different. Some include bags, some don’t. Some use a list, while others use barcodes. PaTAYto, PaTAHto. It doesn’t really matter.
As I’ve already mentioned, the prices are pretty much the same, including the shipping, but here’s the difference. FOREVER’s shipping price includes sending your stuff back to you – theirs doesn’t. That means if you want any or all of your hard copy items back, you’re going to have to pay extra, if you can get them back at all.
So, shipping differences aside, where does your digitized content end up. Well, all the companies are happy to provide you with a DVD or thumb drive, but is that what you want? I can tell that’s what the other guys want you to have. That’s because they are building a book of business for the future. Just as DOSS, Fortran, VHS, floppy discs and Betamax have all gone obsolete, the day will come when those DVD’s and thumb drives are a thing of the past. They’re banking on being around to “digitize” you all over again. Not FOREVER.
We’re hoping you’ll buy your own little piece of the Cloud, so when obsolescence sets in, you can enjoy the promise FOREVER makes to you. They will reformat your images to whatever format comes along when jpg, png, mp4 and their friends are a thing of the past. Never heard of anything like that? That’s because nobody else offers it!
Now, those other guys offer a piece of the cloud, too, but all they are going to do is rent it to you. We’ve all gotten so used to paying for online services by the month or by the year that many people assume that’s what FOREVER is offering and wow, do our prices look ridiculous. Take a second look, those guys are offering to lend you a little space with all the compressing, deleting, sharing, mining and selling that’s comes with that. In this case, it’s FOREVER that’s one-and-done. You pay us once for storage and you’re done forever!!
Look What I Found!!
There’s yet another reason you’ll prefer FOREVER over everyone else. If you have a shoebox of snapshots and a few VHS tapes, anybody can do those. Maybe not as well as FOREVER, but they can do them. Now, what if what you want digitized is larger than 8.5X11 or it’s 16mm or audio or it’s a scrapbook or you’d like to get your DVD’s uploaded. Fuhgeddaboutit! If it’s not plain and simple (see “Level of Care”) they aren’t interested. See the more kinds of things you want to digitize the more kinds of equipment you need and your staff will have to be trained on them.
One of the members of my team told a story one evening. FOREVER called her to apologize, because they were going to be behind schedule delivering an order. The reason for the delay was the fact that the object was so obscure they didn’t have the right machine. Who else but FOREVER would find out what they needed, find the right thing and buy it – at no additional cost to the customer? Everybody else would just say, “Gee, I’m sorry,” but that’s because they are in the digitization business and FOREVER is in the memory keeping business. It’s just what we do!!
Get the Best for Your Memories
So, FOREVER is like an exotic sports car, but it costs about the same amount as that family sedan in your neighbor’s drive way. I’d be driving the MB AMG, wouldn’t you? The color of your digitization box does matter.
So, perhaps you’re still wondering about what I’ve said. Maybe you don’t think you can believe me. Well, how about Trust Pilot? Do you think you can trust them?
Here’s what they have to say about FOREVER and the competition. I’ve blanked out their names, so as to avoid finger pointing, but no one comes near to us.
Since the color of your box does matter, let me help you get the Blue FOREVER box for your digitization needs.
Thanks for coming by. Drop in next week for more NYC, more Memory Keeping 101 and another Weekend Report.
Memory Keeping 101: Sharing and Gifting for Your Grads
Senior Photos, Graduation Announcements, Thank You Cards and Party Invitations
Ok, those who know me know I passed on the whole parenting thing. There’s a facet of our culture I have completely missed out on, except what I see on the social media feeds of my friends. When I was a senior, I took the same senior pictures everyone else did at the local Olan Mills studio and ordered my embossed announcements through Balfour.
My how the world has changed. Booking the right photographer for your senior photo session is a daunting task and you’ve somehow got to come up with a place for the shoot that no one else in the world has ever been. Well, once you’ve booked that photographer (And if you need a referral, just call!) then you have to think about ordering your announcements. Don’t make that purchase until you’ve checked out this page.
FOREVER has just introduced some of the most beautiful Graduation cards you’re going to find on the internet and they’ve upgraded their Design & Print pages to make personalizing your choice beyond easy. Choose the number of photos to include on front and on back, choose landscape or portrait orientation, choose your cardstock, choose your colors, choose your text and automatically address your cards when you’re ordering them. Also use QR codes to provide more photos, access to a video or slideshow, even audio files with a personal invitation from your senior. There are so many options available to you.
But don’t stop there! Choose an entire suite of coordinating stationary for party invitations, thank you cards and more. And whatever you choose, don’t check-out before you go to the Deals page! Over the next months, there are going to be such deals, not just for seniors, but for brides, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
Decision Day
FOREVER graduation stationary is great for any graduate, from Kindergarten to Grade School, but high school seniors may have yet another important event to commemorate – Decision Day. Just as new parents throw big parties to announce the sex of their expected child, high school senior now make a big deal of their college or career choice. Use FOREVER to make it an even more special day.
From creating themed items for your reveal to creating the layout for your Decision Day social media post, FOREVER is there. Want a blanket for their bed, create in FOREVER. Want a dry erase board, use the FOREVER Table Top Panels. How about some coasters for Grandma and Grandpa? How about a thermal cup for your senior to sport with her university’s symbol? Want to create cards for a formal announcement. You’ve got all the FOREVER tools you have for graduation stationary. Wherever your imagination can take you, FOREVER can make it happen.
Gifts for Remembrance and Encouragement
So, maybe you don’t have a senior, but you know you’re going to be getting those announcements about graduations, parties and decision days. Yes, money and gift cards are always greatly appreciated, but in a week or so, they will be gone, gone, gone. Whether they spent it, saved it or invested it, in time names and amounts are going to get foggy. Make your graduation gift memorable with FOREVER’s AutoPrint or Design & Print gifts, slipping those dollars into a very affordable, easy, quick personalized gift your senior will treasure for years to come.
AutoPrint is a quick way to make all kinds of gifts your graduating senior will love. Personalized water bottles, coffee mugs, journals, dry erase boards and more. It’s so easy, you’ll have your gift ready to ship in moments.
Go to FOREVER right now to choose your project and if you need any help, just let me know. You really don’t have to talk to some anonymous bot or listen to hold music. Just call or text me and I’ll walk you through it all.
If you’re looking for something really unique, why don’t you give your senior the gift of FOREVER storage. Set them on the road to memory keeping with their very own permanent storage account they’ll never have to make payments on, never have to upgrade to a different format, that will never be compressed or deleted or mined for advertising. What’s more, they can use the free app to automatically save all the photos they take with their phone or post to Facebook to their permanent storage, so even if they drop their phone into the punch bowl, lose it at a concert or whatever, those precious photos of their college days will be there. As they live their lives, they can add more GB’s and services, but they’ll never forget who set them on the Memory Keeping Road.
Be Generous and Thrifty!
Never ever buy anything from FOREVER without checking the Deals Page. If you don’t see any deals you like, then call me. I always have the inside track on what bargains will be coming out during a month. There’s always a deal at FOREVER and I don’t want you to miss the one you want.
If giving personalized gifts is something you like to do for all kinds of occasions, then you’ll be interested in The Club. No, The Club is not some sneaky way to turn you into a FOREVER Ambassador. The Club is a way to budget your expenditures and save an extra 5% on pretty much everything you buy from FOREVER. You choose what you want to put away for gift giving on a monthly basis from $25 to whatever you want. FOREVER will charge you that amount each month and save it until you are ready to make a purchase. Your dollars never expire. Then when you do buy something, you’re using the dollars you have already put away and you’ll get that 5% discount on top of whatever deals you find on the deals page (with a very, very few exceptions). If you’re a grandma or grandpa with lots of grandkids to gift, then you’ll also want to check out Premiere Shipping – pay one time for a year of shipping, no matter how much you send.
And that’s some of the ways FOREVER can make you a hero with SRS 2023. I’d love to help you with all your Memory Keeping and Memory Sharing ideas. Let’s meet over coffee and talk about it!
Keep coming back for travel stories, a run down on local attractions and my favorite – Memory Keeping.
MEMORY KEEPING 101 – OFF THE SHELF AND INTO YOUR LIFE
Reclaim Your Video Memories
From old reel-to-reel home videos to moments recorded on phones, video memories have been a part of our media landscape for a long time. My family never went down the movie path, so my personal experience with them is limited. However, I have a lot of customers whose memories are more video than photograph. Forever can handle that, too.
What I usually hear first from video clients is they have a stack of tapes/reels somewhere and they don’t even have the equipment to watch them. I have both good and bad news to deliver at this point. The good news is, Forever CAN convert those tapes/reels to digital. The bad news is, there is no watching service to give you a report on what the video contains before the conversion. It is during conversion the subject matter becomes knowable.
So, whether your tapes/reels have riveting moments of well-shot action or hours and hours of poorly shot videography (which would cure insomnia), you get the good with the bad. The good news is this. Once the footage is digital, there are lots of great apps and software out there with which you can turn the yawners into jewels with just a little editing. So, while we all wish our parents, grandparents and spouses were better videographers, at least we can save the good parts for future generations.
What Does It Cost?
I’m not going to lie. Pricing digital conversions is tricky. A small Forever box is regularly priced at $60 (but there’s always some kind of deal going on, so it will never be that much). That price includes the conversion of two “items” in Forever-speak. An item can be a VCR tape or a 50 ft reel (or 25 photo/slides for that matter, but we’re talking video today). If you put two VCR tapes or two 50 ft reels or one VCR tape and one 50 ft reel in the box, digitizing them will be covered. However, the boxes will hold more than two videos, and Forever encourages you to fill them in order to save shipping, but that’s where it gets confusing.
I go over this with everyone who ships in media to be converted, but often they are so excited about the project they don’t hear me. Then we have sticker shock and I hate that. While you can fill the box to the brim, whatever you put in there beyond the first two items cost extra at the regular price of $30 per item.
So, at regular price, if you had 5 tapes/reels. You’d pay $60 for the box, $90 for the extras and then shipping and taxes would be added to that. That’s $150 to reclaim your memories (at regular price) and that’s a pretty good deal – a lot better deal than storing tapes/reels you can’t watch.
Now, the more tapes/reels you have the larger that number gets. If you’re currently storing boxes and boxes of these things, then we need to get together an discuss strategies. We can watch together for the best specials on conversion. Perhaps you have family members who would share the cost with you. You could join Forever as an Ambassador for a year and enjoy that discount on your conversions. And there’s always The Forever Club to help you budget your memory keeping expenses.
Special Considerations
Certain types of media come with certain restrictions. For instance, let’s say you sent in what you thought was your wedding tape and it was all I Love Lucy reruns. It’s always best if you have some idea what’s on your media and if you don’t, please understand our technicians need to be paid for the time they spend on your material, even if it’s not what you thought it would be.
There is nothing Forever can do about the missing wedding footage and they are not allowed to reproduce copies of copyrighted material, so you’d have a conversion mess. At least if it were blank, you could get back 50% of your money, but to pay for finding out you didn’t have the wedding tape you thought you did, that would be a really bad day. Thankfully, we don’t run into many bad days.
While it might be obvious I Love Lucy or Batman Returns are copyrighted, there are other things that might not be as obvious. Take wedding videos by a professional videographer or game clips from your child’s team or video you bought at a dance competition or swim meet. Because you paid for these tapes, you might think that you own the rights to them, but in most cases you do not. Technically, you are supposed to return to the videographer who created the original.
While this is technically true, in many cases, it could be virtually impossible to find the videographer and honor the copyright. So, if you are only digitizing the copyrighted media for your personal use, then you can sign a waiver releasing Forever from any responsibility, should you be sued for improperly use of the footage. I’m warning you though, don’t turn around and use it in a “for profit” project or you could end up in the middle of a very serious law suit.
Just, in case you are wondering, if you have documents like birth, death and wedding certificates, or census and deed records or any publicly available documents, those are not copyrighted. Digitize away!
What If There’s Something Wrong with the Video?
Forever will do the very best it can to digitize whatever video you turn over to them – even if it is broken or damaged. I’ve heard many heartwarming stories about people who doubted Forever would even be able to digitize a single frame of a tape. They thought if they could get back anything they’d be lucky. To their amazement they got back a digitized copy and they couldn’t even tell there had been any damage on the original. Forever cannot guarantee you’ll get back something that looks better than the original, but that could actually be the case in many situations.
So, How Exactly Does it Work?
Well, first choose the box you think will best fit the media items you want digitized, then let’s talk so I can be sure you’ve taken advantage of all the discounts available. You pay for your box, shipping and the covered items up front. You can also choose to get thumb drives or DVD’s if you like, but we should talk about Forever storage and streaming. Soon your box will be delivered.
Materials for packing your box, packing instructions, a worksheet and your shipping label will be inside. Follow the instructions and fill up your box. I’ll be happy to help you with this step. The worksheet will show you what’s included with the purchase of the box and give you an estimate of the amount you will need to pay for extra items. Put the paperwork in with your media and put the shipping label on the outside. The let Fed Ex know there is a pick-up or just drop it off at a box or office. You can keep an eye on the Forever Box Center to know what’s going on.
When Forever gets the box, they audit the worksheet and the items you have packed, to make sure they are correct. Then they’ll start digitizing. It’s all done right here in the good old US of A and lovingly handled by gloved humans, rather than machines. The difference is noticeable take a look at the “A step above the rest” section, on the lower part of this page to see why Forever is better: https://www.forever.com/ambassador/jane-sadek/digital-conversion
When you items are digitized, Forever will notify you that your videos are in your box center. The images will stay in your Box Center for 60 days, giving you time to add them to your Forever account, download them to your computer or whatever. They’ll also ship your stuff back, along with any DVD’s or thumb drives you’ve ordered.
And that’s it. I, of course, would love to discuss the benefits of storing these precious memories on your own Forever account. DVD’s and thumb drives are not permanent storage devices. Someday folks will look at them the way you would look at a 78 rpm vinyl record – if you do have a device to play it on, chances are it won’t sound the way you though it would.
One of the best reasons to choose Forever as your online storage provider is their video streaming service. We’ll talk about that next Thursday.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat. We’re not talking animal cruelty here, I’m referring to the old saw which pointed out most jobs have more than one way to go about them. You say po-TAY-to and I say po-TAH-to. Same veggie, different pronunciations.
Well, Creative Memories has their own interpretation of digital scrapbooking and it’s not a photobook at all. It really is a scrapbook. The coverset is the same coverset you’d use for their traditional albums, but instead of a solid bookcloth or one with decoration embossed on it, your album can have your own photos on it, just like a photobook.
The Best of Both Worlds
My scrapbooking hit a bump in the road when digital came along, because Creative Memories hit a bump in the road. At the time, it just looked as if management was abandoning the traditional scrapbookers who had made them the premiere memory keeping company in the world, but it turned out they had abandoned a whole lot of stuff. We’ll just leave it at that. They went bankrupt and have been totally reorganized and refocused, but those were rough days in the scrapbooking world.
At the time, it seemed as if you had to stay on the traditional scrapbooking road or take the exit to digital everything. There were no solutions which embraced both formats.
I wasn’t ready for digital back then, so I stayed with traditional scrapbooking, but there was no good source for traditional scrapbooking supplies (except the huge stash of CM supplies I had bought up to meet the quarterly quota, which thank goodness is no longer a thing!) I eventually found another scrapbooking supplier which had the same style pages and coverset as CM, so that period of photographic unrest is not apparent on my scrapbook shelves.
Then CM returned and it felt like coming home. At first, I still wasn’t ready for digital, but these days I heartily embrace the CM solution for both traditional and digital scrapbookers. At first glance it looks like a traditional scrapbook. The construction of the coverset and the format of the pages is the same as the CM traditional album, but a closer look reveals the personal images printed on the coverset, just like they are on a photobook.
But wait there’s more! You can create a digital coverset for your traditional album if you want to stick with traditional pages, but want a personalized coverset. Or you can select a beautiful traditional coverset for your project, but all of your pages can be designed and printed digitally. And you have to know where I’m going now. No matter which coverset you choose, your pages can be both traditional and digital. The point is, you don’t have to choose.
Making It Work for You
Now, if you are a scrapbooker yourself, then your mind is exploding with possibilites. If you’re not a scrapbooker, then let me tell you why this is such a good idea. The photos and memorabilia for a Baby Boomer are going to be primarily analog. Generation Z is going to be totally digital. Generation X-er’s are going the start out analog and melt into digital, while Millenials might have anything.
I do custom albums for all generations. Baby Boomers and Millenials are easy. Baby Boomers generally want a traditional album, because that’s a more straightforward way to address their photo mess – even if they turn around and have the album pages digitized, it’s just simpler to work with what they have. Millennials go for online albums, because that’s how their brain works and they don’t want to kill trees.
With Generation X and Millennials, what they have in the way of photographs and memorabilia depends a lot on which direction their parents leaned. If like me, their parents had a hard time letting go of their analog camera and printed photos from the drug store, then the record of their lives, at least at the beginning, will be analog. Then there will be a period where some items are digital, but others are still analog. If their parents instead embraced the digital age from the very beginning, then they generally go the route of the Millenials, but they might print a photobook for their parents. (And that’s what Forever’s for!)
Since Gen X’ers and Millennials have both traditional and digital items, they might feel it would be necessary to make a choice, between scrapbooks and photobooks, but they don’t. It’s not necessary to digitize all the analog stuff to go in a photobook or print all the digital items, so for a traditional scrapbook. With CM digital, you can have a traditional scrapbook with both traditional pages for analog and printed pages for digital. Some people even get their digital items printed and add traditional photos or decoration to the printed page. There are no rules!! Only solutions and I can bring you all of them.
What Do You Have and What Do You Want?
I started the Memory Keeping 101 series the same way I begin my conversations with a custom scrapbook client. What do you have and what do you want? You answer may be that you have a little of everything and you’d like a solution to embrace both analog and digital. Well, here’s your solution. No matter what you have, CM has a scrapbooking system which will do either or both. Just give it all to me and let me at it. Or you can do it yourself. I’m here to help either way.
Come back tomorrow for The Weekend Report if you need suggestions for your weekend and on Wednesday, Travel Talk will be focused on NYC. On Thursday, we’ll be back to digital solutions from Forever.
MEMORY KEEPING 101– Artisan, Scrapbooking, but Digital
Digital Photo Gifts and Photobooks
You know the names – Snapfish, Shutterfly, Mixbook, SmugMug, etc. etc. etc. You go there. You drop your photos into a template. Maybe you can edit some, maybe you can’t. You can make gifts with photos, like blankets, coffee mugs, calendars and ornaments. You can also make bound photobooks.
Ever try to contact their customer service? I have chatted online. Either you’re talking to someone with a name five miles long that you can’t pronounce or it’s a bot. Doesn’t matter. They can’t help you, because if it is a real problem they don’t have a script for it. So they elevate your problem and good luck with that. I’m still waiting for my email from my elevated customer service call concerning a Christmas Card order a few years ago.
Quit that!! You can do all of that and more on Forever. Highest quality images, best quality products, quick turnaround and amazing selection. Here’s the difference. Those other guys are the big box store. Forever is me. Now I’m not doing all the work, but you have me so you never have to chat with a bot. I have Forever, so whatever it is that you want to do with your photos, I can get it done.
Since the main focus of my business is custom scrapbooking, I don’t spend much time trying to transform Snapfish customers into Forever customers. In fact, if you’re already memory keeping, then good for you. That’s what I want. I’m happy to tell you why I believe Forever is a better way to go, and I would love for you to buy these services from me instead of them, but my real target is people who just have a mess and want me to fix it. I would love it, if next time you go to print photos or make a calendar/coffee mug/photobook/blanket, you gave Forever a try, but what I want most is for you to keep on memory keeping.
And Then There Was Artisan
I’ll be honest with you. I don’t do all that photo gifting stuff for my own purposes. Perhaps that’s because I don’t have kids, grandkids or pets, but I think the real reason is because I’m a scrapbooker. I want my photos and memorabilia in an album, not on my coffee mug.
Because I’m a scrapbooker, I’m used to starting with a blank page, so all those photobook templates frustrate the heck out of me – even Forever photobook templates. I tried. I really tried and I ran, not walked, back to my traditional scrapbooks.
Then I discovered Artisan! With Artisan I can start with a blank page. Oh, they have all the templates in the world, if you want them. In fact, the training videos assume you want to use templates and teach from that standpoint, so my learning curve was pretty steep. However, after a few sessions, I skipped to the part where they just told me what the various buttons did, without telling me how they worked with templates. I haven’t looked back.
I still prefer traditional scrapbooking. Perhaps you know my husband and I own a real estate photography company. I sit at a computer all day long managing photos – downloading, uploading, receiving and delivering. When my real estate photography day is over, I would prefer to move to the scrapbooking table and do things manually. Don’t get me wrong, I will do digital photobooks, for my clients, for gifts and occasionally just for myself, but it’s just not my first love.
If like me, you just want to keep doing traditional scrapbooks, then you should at least allow Forever to print your photos. Here’s why they are the best:
Taking It to the Next Level
If digital scrapbooking is your thing, then before I go, I should tell you about Pixels 2 Pages. It’s an online community of digital scrapbookers. These people are serious about it. They even have retreats where they get together with their computers, either virtually or in person, to scrapbook. You can try it out for free for a month.
Online communities are not my thing, but they might be yours. I have met some of these people in person and they speak a language I don’t even understand. I think it’s easy to learn, but again, I’m primarily a traditional scrapbooker. I’d rather talk about the latest Border Maker or Punch, but, as I said, that’s me. I just wanted you to know it was there if you wanted it.
That’s all for today! We’ll visit the Metroplex tomorrow and go to NYC on Wednesday, but on Thursday, we’ll get back to Memory Keeping 101.
jane sadek 