EVOLVE 2024: Winning Strategies for Retail Success

They will never be this, cheap. So get your ticket now at crystalmediaco.com/evolve. And I can't wait to see you next year. Welcome to Rooted in Retail. I'm your host, Crystal Vilkaitis. Here, we have engaging and informative conversations with successful indie retailers and industry experts. Together, we learn, connect, and grow. Don't miss our live after the show every Tuesday night in the Rooted in Retail Facebook group. Alright, here's today's episode. We did it.

We did EVOLVE, year two, 2024. It's in the books and holy guacamole, it was an epic event. And in today's episode, I want to tell you about it. I want to share a little bit of the behind the scenes, some of the highlights for me, and just take you into this world a little bit that we call EVOLVE. If you were at EVOLVE, you know that this event was an incredible experience. I am so proud of what my team and I did. I honestly have no negative feedback. This event was seamless, thankfully.

There was a few like very small tech problems we had, that were so small, but like everything flowed the agenda, the timing, the spacing, the speakers, the networking, everything connected and flowed and was so great. And if you were there and you came up to me and said, how amazing this experience was for you. Cause I had so many people come up and tell me that. Thank you, because I love hearing it from you. I love hearing that the impact that this event is having and how helpful my team is.

I just want to take you into this world a little bit.

My whole goal with EVOLVE, the reason I created this conference, and I've said this before is I wanted to create an event that I wish was available for me. I go to a lot of different business conferences and events. I've been to probably hundreds and I've spoke at them.

I've attended, now I plan them, but I always just saw these opportunities to tighten up a little bit from like an agenda and content perspective and opportunities to really create transformation in a very short period of time, like two days and add insane amount of value. I think that if you've ever seen me speak or my team speak, one thing we're really known for at Crystal Media is having really high quality, high value content. You're going to get a lot of notes.

You're going to get action items. You're going to get a plan. Like you get tools, you get strategies, you get so much out of our content. And so if you could imagine that, taking that and amplifying it over two days. I hand select these speakers. I talk to them about what I'm looking to create and the value I need them to provide and, my goodness, the agenda for this year was out of this world.

We touched on so many aspects of business and retail, obviously from a Crystal Media perspective, we share social, digital marketing. But we had merchandising, open to buy with inventory management. We had a retailer, actually two retailers, speak Beth Rich and Kathy Cruz talking about knowing your numbers and all about the money, honey. That was Kathy Cruz. And Beth Rich was talking about how she tripled her store in just three years.

I had ByWickUp talk about protecting your assets , which is so critical because spamming is on the rise. Hacking is on the rise. Matt Harris talked about perspective and I really cannot wait to listen to all of my breakouts' replays. That's actually something that we surprise our attendees with is they get replays to the sessions. I can't wait to listen because I was popping in and out of all the topics, full houses.

It was engaged audiences, but I didn't get to hear the full thing, but every time I was in, I was like, "Oh my God, this is so good. I don't want to leave." Like, my speakers brought it. I opened the event really talking about wanting to create magic and that's something that is special to me and is important to me at events that I do.

And I had this talk about market magic, these seven things that I think retailers need to be really successful. If you could check the box on these seven things, then you are a thriving retailer. And I'm going to share those seven things on this episode. If you don't have all these seven things, then that's okay. Like you can work towards them.

My whole thought and my whole reasoning for sharing these things is to really help the retailer be motivated to look at your business and see where are the holes and where I could fill them with different opportunities. And so those seven things were adaptability, speed to market, strong branding, data driven decisions, community engagement, strong online presence, and a memorable customer experience. Now, you hear a lot about the experience side on Rooted in Retail.

I talk about it, my guests talk about it. We talk about branding, but when we package all these things up together, Like I said, if you could check the box on all seven of these things, you are a successful business.

And one thing that I noticed from EVOLVE this year is I think that there's a big opportunity for retailers to be paying more attention to the data. That was the feedback I was hearing from our attendees. I have people do shares, like what's a big takeaway you learned today. I love that because you hear from what other people are taking away and it reminds you, Oh yeah, that was good. Or I didn't even pick up on that, but that's really great. Oh, that store. I need to go talk to her.

Like I could help her with that or whatever. So I love those shares. And a few people mentioned the data. I had some personal one on one conversations. People are like, "I need to be looking at my data." And this came down to your inventory management. Dane Cohen with Management One was one of our opening keynotes and just had a really great presentation about, he actually showed this retailer Girl Tribe. And they're doing those seven things like go check out Girl Tribe. They're crushing it.

They're doing those seven things. It was such a great example of market magic. And he just talked about how making key decisions off of the data and how you're buying and what needs to go on sale and what you've got to get rid of. Dane said, "your inventory should not have a birthday." I love that. It always gets a lot of laughs. But it is so true. And so that data piece was just such a big thing. Also, the data came into having more information on our email lists.

So I talked more about email marketing this year at EVOLVE. I had a new session I did for our VIPs called What I've Been Thinking About. And I go on these walks and I'm just often thinking about how can a retailer grow their business fastest. It's the fastest and easiest way.

And because technology digital marketing is changing so quick, what I maybe thought would work really well, or what was working really well a year ago, two years ago, 10 years ago might not be what I would be suggesting this year. And so I'm always just thinking about that. And it was felt like it was sit down with me and let me tell you what I've been thinking about. And email was a big part of that. Now, what I was happy to see is in my VIP room, which we sold out of VIP.

Oh my goodness, it was so fun to see that we sold out. We had a full house on our half day VIP. Pretty much everybody is doing email marketing. I was really happy to see that. And they're at least sending monthly. I do think there's opportunities to send more frequently. Like every week, maybe multiple times a week, but we do this based off the segmentation and Miranda from Cloud Nine Pajamas talked about this on her Rooted in Retail episode.

But she's making money in her sleep because she has all this data on her customers and can pull those lists based off of the data, the purchasing behaviors, and send email communications to get people to buy. And so I noticed, as the questions and the conversations I was having. I think that we're sending, but we don't have much data on our customers. And so that's a massive opportunity that I saw for our attendees that I really hope they create that transformation by start collecting the data.

And you can collect that data by doing surveys. You could do a contest, just asking people to fill out some more information to fill out their profile, depending on your POS and your email service provider. You can sync those things together and get data like purchasing. Data at one shop, our platinum sponsor of EVOLVE. That's what his platform does, syncs into your POS and gets that data for you. So check out oneshopretail.com if you need the data.

We just need to be making smarter decisions when it comes down to segmenting, whether it's our emails, if it's our Facebook advertising. I talked about ads as well, because we have an ads agency at Crystal Media and our most successful clients are our scale clients. They basically have everything that we offer at Crystal Media. We do their ads, we run their listings, their insider members, they get a bunch of great perks and by being a scale client, it's like bundling everything.

So part of that is running their ads and I was showing case studies of how we are generating tens of thousands of dollars for retailers on like a $260 ad budget. It's nuts. One of the case studies I shared was a sewing company. And before working with us, they had this event where in store event, they would market it. They sold $30,000 from that one event. We come on board, we advertise for them. I believe our budget was like $260 or $285.

Like it was under $300 that we spent and their sales from that same event that they did $30,000 last year, they did $110,000 in 2023 because of our ads. And so like just showing the power of Facebook advertising and how you do not need a big bucks budget when you are advertising. Our ad clients are spending on average about $800 a month, but that can vary depending on events and what's going on and their goals and size of business.

You also need data when it comes to your ads, because you want to be really targeted. You want that messaging to be very specific to who's going to be seeing it. And so there should be a strategy there. That's obviously why we have an ads agency. We could do this for you, reach out if you want to learn more, you could go to our site, crystalmediaco.com. And you could either read about ads management or scale or book a call with Pauline and she could tell you more about it.

But it just comes back to that data of making sure that we're pulling the right lists. We're segmenting. Our creative, what the video says, or the image looks like, or the copy. It all connects back to the audience. Our inventory, our open to buy. We're making decisions based off of the data. That was just such a big takeaway I got from EVOLVE 2024. Some additional things that I got, we had a couple of panels. And I love panels.

For me personally, I just really love hearing the diverse perspectives and his experience that people have. And I had a really great panel. It was Natalie Garner with Dr. Doug's, Nick McHenry with One Shop Retail, Kathy Donovan Wagner with Retail Mavens, Vi Wickham with the Wizard of Ads, and then me. And we're going to air this panel on Rooted in Retail. So you're going to hear the whole conversation. It was one of my big highlights over these two and a half days.

I really loved the content that came out of that. I loved the conversation. I loved how real the advice was talking about vulnerabilities and opening up and stepping in truly to who you are, but then also just some real practical and tactical advice too.

So that was a big highlight for me. I loved it so much. And then we did our generational shopping panel as well. We did that last year. You can hear last year's on Rooted. I did air it on Rooted. I don't have the episode number off the top of my head, but we can link to that in the show notes. But there were two takeaways in that generational shopping panel that I had this year. One is that the panel asks do you do mystery shopping?

And 2 people's hands raised in the audience and we had about 220 attendees. We more than doubled our our attendance in 2023. We had a grateful room. It was awesome. So if I have over 200 people in attendance and two people are raising their hand for mystery shopping. I feel like that's a massive opportunity for retailers. I think you need to hire mystery shoppers and you could go through a company that actually facilitates this.

Like they find the person, they give them the gig, what they need to look for. They'll collect the materials. And often that person's just getting paid a very small amount to do it, but they'll get store credit. So they could go in and they could spend $25 and basically they get that whatever they buy for free in exchange for their advice on their experience for shopping.

When I was working retail, I've worked several retail jobs, but one of them was Legs Haynes Valley Playtex at the outlet mall. And we would get secret shopped there all the time. I just remember like constantly getting these reports every month about who was working, what was the experience.

And as a an employee, like I just always hoped that I would get really good remarks and it creates more of that accountability for the employees because you never know if this stranger is a secret shopper or not. So you want to just deliver excellent experience always, because that's at least the store that I worked for. That's what we were trying to provide. We cared about that experience. And then you don't know if you're going to be mystery shopped or not.

So it's just like, give it your all, all the time. And so the fact that retailers aren't doing this, like I was saying, you could hire somebody. I think that there's a company called Bestmark that does mystery shopping. You could Google, see if there's something in your area, but you can also just have a friends sister or, a friend's nieces, boyfriend, or like somebody in your life that your team doesn't know them. And then they would just come in and just give them some guidelines.

Like I want you to really pay attention to the cleanliness of the store. How soon does somebody greet you? How do they greet you? Search for something specific or maybe not just give them what you want to learn. And you could be doing this every month. And I would tell my employees, we've implemented a secret shopping program. And at any point, a secret shopper, a mystery shopper could be coming in here and have an experience with you and I'm going to get the feedback back.

Make sure you're following XYZ, or our SOPs, and you're delivering excellent service. I just saw a massive opportunity for that. That the fact that two people raise their hand, you, this is also data. You could get so much information and data out of that experience from these mystery shoppers. So if you're somebody who's also not doing that or never does it, that would be an action item I would give you.

Another thing that came out of that generational shopping panel was the, I think they call her the silent generation. It was Sandy. She's the oldest generation. She's so funny.

She was talking about how she likes watching Facebook lives, but if she's watching a live and she's liking these products, what she's going to do is she's going to set the phone down while it's live streaming and she's going to go grab a piece of paper and she wants to write down the location and the name and the information about the store. So she could go in and purchase. Because she maybe doesn't feel comfortable with writing comment or commenting sold.

She might not feel comfortable being like, I'll take the medium, or how do I buy? Okay. But she's watching, but she wants to then write down your location and then come in and shop with you. So the key point here is when you're going live, you can pin a comment to the top and that you could change whatever that comment is. So when you first go live, I would recommend like telling people what they need to do. On your live stream in order to buy.

And if one of those things is just to come in or call, you're going to want your address and your phone number in that pinned comment, because then think about Sandy, she can just see it right there in the pinned comment and write it down. And it makes that so easy for her. She doesn't have to look at your store name, go Google to find the location. What if you're not managing your listings through a program like Get Listed that we could do it for you.

So then you're not showing up or it's wrong information. You have the wrong hours on there. She now shows up at your store. She wants to buy the things she saw on the live stream, but you're not open because it's wrong hours. Then it's bad experience. She's just been so frustrated because it was so hard to find your address. Now you're not open. We want to make life easy for Sandy and for all of our customers.

And so by pinning that comment and saying your location, how to buy, making it really easy. Just always keep that in mind when you're selling products. How can I make this as easy as I can and as convenient as I can for my customers? Also as fun as I can, which we definitely talked about at EVOLVE, like how can I have fun? How can I surprise and delight my customers? I think that's a really good question to be asking. So then that was all like day one, so much happened in day one.

You guys, it was so crazy for me, just like a little behind the scenes. You work really hard to create this event. A lot of time went into me talking and finding my speakers, talking to my speakers, me creating my content, working on the agenda. There's a lot of time and then there's a lot of rehearsal and practice and I just really care. I really want it to be a transformative event. And so then you like, all of a sudden it's showtime and I show up at our VIP day and it's like we're doing it.

And then boom, you blink and VIP day is done and I'm in my hotel room eating dinner and I'm like, wow. VIP day is done. And then we go into day one and oh, we had this beautiful stage. I loved the stage. If you weren't there, go to our Instagram so you could see some of the pictures. It was just such a beautiful room. And the Gaylord's so beautiful in Denver, but they like, all of a sudden, all of it's happening. I remember sitting in the back of the room towards the end of day one.

I'm like, Day one's almost over. Like this is just flowing, it's happening so fast. We did our cocktail reception. I connected with so many amazing retailers. And then all of a sudden it's morning of day two and I welcome Donald Miller to the stage. Now, if you have listened to Crystal Uncorked, my old podcast. I'm not filming any new episodes right now, but I've talked about Donald Miller a few times on that show. I went to a writer's workshop at basically at his house.

He's got this event venue on his property in Nashville. I've read his books, I've followed him for years. And the fact that I had Donald Miller on the EVOLVE stage was really epic. Like Pauline, my COO, texted me and was like, "Don's speaking on your stage." And I'm like, this is so cool. And I'm in the back of the room listening to him and I'm so into his content that I became this attendee. I forgot Oh, you're hosting this thing. Like you got stuff you got to do.

I was like, Oh my God, I got to get up. He's going to be ending soon. Like I need to go over here. I was just so in his content. I loved it. He provided so much value and something that he said, that's so simple. Oh my gosh, seriously.

One thing from Don's talk will make every attendee in that room more money. He brought so many strategies and tactics for people to make more money. It was awesome. That's why you come to EVOLVE. There's so many reasons, but man, the speakers that I provide, they're going to help you make more money. One thing that Don said, I'll share here on the podcast is he said using the copy, like if you have signage on your products.

Like Mother's Day, I'm filming this right now on May 7th, we concluded EVOLVE April 29th. So basically it's been a week since we've finished here. And so Mother's Day is coming up and he said, if you have signage that says Moms will love this. That's it. Or Grads will love this. Dads will love this. Kids will love this. Kids under 10 will love this. If you want to add some age, your girlfriend will love this. Like just have that direct confident copy. It helps sell more.

Just people are looking for you to make a decision for them. They want permission. Is this the right decision? And Don was talking about how you say I think this is the right decision for you. You just add those things in the sales conversation, you're going to increase your sales. And I've already been seeing EVOLVE attendees post in our Facebook group. We have an EVOLVE 2024 Facebook group. Who are doing this, who created the sign that says Moms will love this. Like I love action takers.

Days after the event, they've already created it, printed it and are doing it. So that's awesome. Another thing that Don said is if you just use only before sharing the price. So if you're like, yes, you know, it is only $19.99. Saying only can also help the conversions. It's more, it's like that psychology, the psychology of words, just being very strategic on how we say things. Don's presentation was so good. This is why you show up to EVOLVE because you got to be in the room.

You got to learn from these people and I'm just so grateful. He was there on many levels and he wrote a really nice message in my book. And asked about my book cause I do want to write several books and it was just really awesome to have him there.

Something else that was really awesome, after Don spoke, I did my AI session. I blew a lot of minds. Like I've talked about AI on Rooted in Retail before, but the stuff that I demoed at EVOLVE, like I showed people a clone of me. I have created an AI version of Crystal Vilkaitis, who sounds very much like me, who has my mannerisms, who has this video set up, and I can feed it things to say. And I had it set up say, "Hey, EVOLVE attendees." And it talked to my attendees.

I also created a version of me that speaks French. I gave all, I showed like what's coming with AI, the tools that are available. You could basically create commercials like movie quality, high production, quality commercials and movies and content by just writing in prompts and AI technology. And I shared all that at EVOLVE. It was fire. I got such great feedback from that. It really did blow people's minds. And I like doing that. I like seeing and showing people what's coming in the future.

This is why I have a conference called EVOLVE. Like we need to understand what's coming and we need to adapt and EVOLVE so we stay relevant. And I shared a lot of cool ways to do that. And then just what's coming with AI.

After my AI session, we did a brand new thing. We had our independent retailer awards and it was so fun. So I love award shows, I always cry. Like even if I don't know the person who's winning or I didn't see the film they were in or anything, I just always cry. I think it's really amazing when somebody who's worked so hard gets featured like gets noticed, gets that recognition for all their hard work. And I wanted to create something. I've wanted to do this for many years at Crystal Media.

And so doing it at our live event is the best way to do it. So we had three award winners. We had the award for 15 mile famous, for community involvement, the community champion, and the most evolved, kind of like the most improved. So our 15 mile famous award went to Polka Dots Heidi, who's been on the show before. She's my 15 mile famous award winner. They've just been doing such great stuff locally to really build their brand and their name. And so they won that award.

For our community champion award, we had Darn Knit Anyway, who is a scale client of ours, and they're going to be on the show. I think after I'm filming this or yeah, I think next week when you're hearing this, you're going to then be able to listen to Amy and Carly from Darn Knit Anyway. They were our award winner. Oh my gosh, the things they're doing in their community. You're going to be wildly inspired by that episode. So be sure to tune in. I just love Carly too.

And then for our most evolved award, we had Corinda and Dale from For The Wild Birds. We just met them at EVOLVE last year. They were brand new to us and they've just been excellent students and have been really doing some great things with their social. So really great with these beautiful awards and just honored them. And it was really fun to do that and really special. So I can't wait to do it next year as well.

And who knows, maybe you're listening to this and you attend EVOLVE and you'll, you might be an award winner, which would be so fun to celebrate you.

Something else that was very special for me is my mentor, Jen Gottlieb, was also one of our keynote speakers. She talked about how to be seen and put yourself out there. And she just has such a great story of rock bottom and turning that into this amazing career. And she just, it's persevering. She just kept trying and kept trying.

And now what she's done, she's one of the top motivational speakers in the world, and she just helps other people get out of their own way and be seen and show up and allow for that visibility. And because when we do that, we'll grow our business. Like I talk about that a lot here on the show and in my content. And so to have Jen there, and when Jen showed up, I heard her and I turned around the corner and she gave me this big hug. And she just starts tearing up. She's like, "I'm going to cry."

I'm like, "don't cry. Cause then I'm going to cry." So here we are just like walking with our arms around each other. And she's seeing the scene. And she's just like, "you built this." It was really cool to have this moment with my mentor, who I really look up to. And I've learned a lot from, to have her see what I've created with my team and then speak on that stage. And after Jen spoke, so many retailers came up to me on how they needed to hear that message.

They were crying, talking to Jen, getting their book signed, obviously, like things triggered within them and they needed that. They needed to hear that message. And I am just, again, I'm glad that I created this event and this experience to help those people wherever they are. That's why I have so many different types of speakers. Because we're not all in the same place of our business and personally in our lives, we need different things during different times.

And so I'm very strategic on the types of content and speakers that we bring to EVOLVE, to support you depending on where you are in your journey. But Jen's session was just awesome. And she's such an incredible speaker. I loved having her there.

And then I just want to say like when I ended, I had a few more people share some of their shares and their big takeaways and Melinda, who was sitting right front row, she raised her hand and she's like, "one of mine was the quote that you recently read, which is, 'if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got.'" And she had this click moment like, "Oh, I need to make a change.

If I just keep doing what I'm always doing, I'm going to just keep getting my same results and I don't want my same results." And we've heard that quote time and time again, but if you really think about it and analyze, how are you supporting yourself? How are you changing? How are you evolving to help you get to the next level or wherever it is you want to go? That often requires us to change and to do something different.

And again, that's why I call this conference EVOLVE, because it's really critical for us to continuously EVOLVE so we stay relevant. That was a big aha for Melinda and feeling a little bit like she's been hiding too. And I know a lot of people in that room felt that way too. We hide. It's easier if we hide, if we don't put ourself out there, we don't make social priority. It kind of is back burner.

We feel like it's overwhelming, but really the overwhelm is just because it hasn't been a priority. If we really look through it as the lens of, we get that opportunity to connect with our customers every single day and treat it that way and make it fun. fun and just show up for them and you just be consistent and you just have to commit, it's going to become a habit for you and it's going to be a lot easier.

And a big part of my closing day one keynote was about commitment and really committing to yourself, committing to your store, to your marketing, to commit to one thing. How do we commit to doing something for our marketing our store, pick something you enjoy. And I just talked about a lot of different ways that you can market your store, but let's find the thing that you enjoy and then commit and you got to show up. And so I really loved that Melinda shared that as her takeaway.

And I think a lot of people had that and it was so beautiful kind of to end the conference of EVOLVE with that quote.

So I just, like I said, so many people came up to me and said, "this is the best conference I've been to." Oh, we've already, we're already 10 percent sold out for next year. Like on April 30th, we were already over 10 percent sold out for next year because people already bought their ticket. They're like, "I'm coming." And then so many people said to me too, "I'm in a thread with three other stores. I'm in a thread with four other stores. They're all asking me, how's it going?

How's it going?" They're having the FOMO. They're wishing they were here. I'm like, you got to come next year. And I have a feeling we're going to sell out next year too. So you can get 2025 tickets. They're available. They're the lowest price they're going to be right now. Cause we're in super early bird. A lot of people waited to get their tickets. The longer you wait, the more money you're going to spend. So you could go to crystalmediaco.com/evolve and secure your ticket.

You're probably going to want to give VIP because VIP, you get the extra half day, you get lunches, you get an extra cocktail reception with me and my team and other speakers, like that's the way to go. And it will probably sell out again this year too. But man, the reviews that we got means the world. Cause we worked really hard to produce something that was meaningful to you, the retailer, and we're going to do it all again next year.

And I'm just really grateful for everybody who trusted us, who flew, who took time out of their calendar, who drove, who showed up, who played fall, pull out and are really willing to transform and implement what they learned. And keep us posted. If you were there, keep us posted. We want to hear about your journey. We want to hear what you're doing and maybe you should come on Rooted in Retail and share your experience and where you are and where you are now.

Let's keep this conversation going about the transformation of our attendees from EVOLVE. I'm really grateful. My team knocked it out of the park. I couldn't ask for a better experience. So team, if you're watching this, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And again, if you were there, thank you. I hope to see you in 2025. Also, big thank you to our amazing sponsors.

Like we had incredible sponsors where people, somebody, Oh, I have to share this before I was going to sign off, but I have to share something that's huge. One Wizard of Ads, they were doing these free website audits, which is a thousand dollar value. And they found one of our clients, a scale client of ours. She has a website and through their audit, they found somebody that duplicated her website, her brand, everything. They were selling like taking transactions acting as if it's her.

So now imagine if a customer is shopping from the fake website, they could get their data stolen, their credit card information. I don't know if these people are getting paid products, or if they're just taking, I have no idea what's happening there. I'm letting them do all the follow up, but that was a big aha that came out of the sponsors having it in our room. That's huge. That's going to save our client tons of hassle and issues. And we're going to continue to see that, unfortunately.

So it's important to know these things and what to look for. Have people that can help you like Wizard of Ads. And then also there's a new app that was there, Hatch, that people were loving. Anna, who I buy all my clothes from, from Pilar, her boutique, who I've had on the show also. If you got to meet Anna at EVOLVE, she was on Rooted in Retail. Go listen to her episode, but she was there demoing and it was really fun just to have her in the room and Hatch.

Anna can count and reconcile her inventory in under three hours. And when I said that from stage at EVOLVE, everyone was like, what? Like the whole crowd was like, gasped. It was really funny. So we just had incredible sponsors, Retail Mavens, who's helping make more money in your sleep. Management one was there with open to buy inventory management. I talked about Nick with one shop retail and his texting and email platform.

We had Dr. Doug's who was sponsoring the chapsticks and the balms to keep us moisturized and hydrated in dry Denver. We love their products so much. We had my dear friend and matron of honor, Heather Ingersoll with Hometown Insurance, who she can help from a benefits perspective, no matter where you are and can also help some support some of the local retailers. So it was great to have her in the room.

And then we also had Heart on Main Street, who I am on the board of, and we raised, oh my gosh, we raised over $10,000 for heart on main street, we did a silent auction. People were bidding and outbidding each other. There was competition. It was so fun. And we raised over $10,000, which goes directly back to independent retailers. So what an event. It was transformative. It was Epic. It was fire. It was So good. And I am just so proud of what we created.

And I hope to see you in the room in 2025, because that's where you got to be. You got to show up. You got to be in the room where happened in the room where happened. I did play some Hamilton because I love Hamilton. I just really believe you got to be in the room. You got to invest in yourself. You got to show up. You got to play full out. You got to learn. You have to be in these rooms to learn, to understand what you don't know and what's coming, and connect with other retailers.

And that was another thing I heard from a lot of attendees. I'm loving hearing, how are sales for you? And what's selling well for you? And what I have this issue. How can you help me solve it? So much networking was happening in connection and new friendships were formed too. So fun. Love doing EVOLVE. If you were there, thank you team. Thank you, it was epic. I hope to see you in 2025. Remember I am rooting for your success. Have a great week ahead. Bye. Thank you so much for being here.

It means the world to me. Don't forget to join the Rise and Shine newsletter, which is social media news you need to know sent via email every Monday morning, go to crystalmediaco.com/rise to join and don't miss the newest episode of Rooted in Retail, which drops every Sunday morning.