The Alabama Black Caucus held their annual meeting on October 11th at the Grand Hotel in beautiful Point Clear, Alabama.  Caucus members are black legislators from both houses of the Alabama Legislature.  The event was, for the most part, a two day event and we sponsored the reception on the first day of the event.  So, we got top billing.

WHO ATTENDED

All but a handful of the caucus members made the trip.  It turns out there were over 30 legislators who attended.  With spouses, friends and others there were well over 100 in attendance.  Those from Borrow Smart were Jaime and Michael Sullivan with the Lobbyist Group, Roy Hutcheson Sr. and Roy Jr. with Title Cash, Frank Evans, Bill Ritter and Heather Sellers with The Money Store and Max Wood with Title Loan Express.

WHAT WE DID

Words can not describe how much we enjoyed this event and how successful it was.  Although we sponsored the reception, we actually made our presentation at the dinner.  During the dinner we gave away five Ipods as door prizes.  Each Ipod included our Borrow Smart testimonials for their new owners to see and hear.  So, the stories we want to tell are always with them!  Our Ipod giveaway was clearly one of the "highlights" of the dinner.  Everyone wanted to know where "is my Ipod?" If we did not accomplish anything else (which is certainly not the case) this alone would have been worth the entire event.  Everyone in the room got to know the name Borrow Smart Alabama in a fun and positive way!

During the meeting each of us spent a great deal of time with a particular caucus member just "mixing it up" either on the golf course, at the dinner, at the lounge -- and in some cases well into the evening.  During all of this we made some very good friends with people who in most cases are not supporters of our industry.  We most likely did not change many minds at this meeting (that was not the intent here), but we did get to know one another much better and made some special friends in the process.  It is probably fair to say that both sides were quite pleasantly surprised to find that the people on other side were just "real and genuine people" like themselves.  Clearly, the caucus members were a great bunch of folks and they now know our members and what we stand for.

WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED

Now that we have gotten to know many of the caucus members, we feel we can work with them to forge programs that will help them and their constituents in the use of our services.  It is so much more fruitful to work with people you know and respect.  We believe we have taken a good step in the right direction by hosting and attending this meeting.   As you know, one of the primary reasons we exist is to develop programs that will improve the use of our services by our customers.  And, many of our customers are constituents of the caucus members.  It will take time, but this will make that task much easier and so much more productive.

WE OWE

Certainly, we owe Michael Sullivan and Big Communications a very big "THANK YOU" for helping us pull this off so successfully.  This was Michael's idea and he made all the right contacts to make it happen.  Big provided us with professionally prepared materials for handouts, presentations and helped us pull the Ipod thing off with great success.

CONCLUSION

So, all-in-all, we were well received by the caucus members.  They were genuinely appreciative of our sponsorship and told us so on many occasions throughout the meeting.  The topper was that we met some really great people and had a ton of fun in the process.  It just does not get much better.

Needless, to say this is probably one of most significant events any of our associations (Modern Financial, TPCA and CFL) have been involved with.  We can't wait until the next one!  The Alabama Black Caucus members now know our members by name and they know us on a personal basis.  That can only help our Borrow Smart members!