12th May 2017
Last weekend our franchisees packed their bags and made their way to Manchester for our Annual Seminar, flooding the city with a sea of red. Setting out from all corners of the UK and even California, they arrived raring to go, each determined to make the very most out of our two days together - to meet new franchisees, catch up with old friends and most importantly to learn how they could continue to grow their Pyjama Drama businesses. And boy did we learn a LOT!
We heard from fellow franchisees Caroline from South West London and Jane from Oswestry and Shrewsbury, who shared how they have grown their businesses by taking on staff. We heard from Jay in Pembrokeshire who had us in stitches as she shared her rollercoaster first year in business and from Directors Sarah and Rachel who shared their plans for Pyjama Drama in the coming year.
‘I learned loads from the franchisees talks and loved hearing about all the plans for the future of Pyjama Drama – exciting times!’ Anon
Being ‘drama types’, of course, we had to play drama games, share acting techniques and do a little bit of singing, and one of the highlights of Saturday was a workshop delivered by Megan Walker from Pyjama Drama in California. She taught us how our voice was our ‘money maker’ and during her workshop on protecting and projecting our voice had us lying down, rolling over and making some very strange sounds indeed!
‘The voice training was so interesting and will help me loads in getting my voice ready for classes.' Lisa from Gloucestershire
On Saturday afternoon we were also all blown away by our guest Paula Cohen from Taylory who delivered a workshop on Time Management (Time Management, an interesting subject – who knew??)
‘The Time Management women really BLEW MY MIND! It’s fascinating learning about how our sub-conscious works, and I’m taking away a lot that I will be implementing in my daily structure.’ Jay from Pembrokeshire
Then, after a lovely night out together socialising, on Sunday morning we heard from Sarah Rijnen, Director of Pyjama Drama USA who provided training on teaching our programme to children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders, which struck a chord with many of our franchisees.
‘Most inspiring was the information on working with children with autism – thank you.’ Anon
And finally, we were joined by Helen Taylor from The White House Life Spa who led us in a workshop entitled ‘Transforming self-belief’. Helen is a trained hypnotherapist but luckily didn’t try to hypnotise us (I don’t think!), but helped to us to focus on the things that hold us back and gave us some great tips for visualising success!
‘One of the best bits was learning visualisation techniques from Helen.’ Kirsty from Southampton
And let’s not forget our amazing award winners! Kirsty from Southampton won Newcomer of the Year, Sara Hall from Leeds, Highest Earner, Caroline from South West London walked away with the award for Biggest Growth and the lovely Christine from Huddersfield who has integrated sign language in to her sessions nabbed the Award for Innovation.
Phew! It was an amazing weekend, thanks to everyone for coming and making it such fun and so valuable. If you've ever thought about running your own business and fancy being part of such an amazing team, get in touch or download a prospectus to find about more.
Have fun!