 So, this program actually came about when I was at the Palo Alto City Library. I was the community engagement outreach librarian there. And it's always been my dream since I was in library school to be an outreach librarian. So I've been a librarian for eight and a half years, for a year four of being a children's librarian. I actually went up to my boss and I said, hey, you know what? You know, this children's librarian thing is cool and everything, but I kind of want to be an outreach librarian. She said, yeah, sure, well, you know, we need you at the branch. We need you to do story times. We need you to do this and that. So I said, eh, okay. But two years later, I got my dream job. I was able to become an outreach librarian. She gave me one year. The director and my boss gave me one year to prove myself. She said, you know what? I'm going to give you one year. Prove yourself that you can be an outreach librarian and we'll keep this not as a pilot program, but we'll keep this as an ongoing program. And so, fortunately enough, I crossed my fingers. I did a lot of work in the community and I was able to accomplish that before I went to the Santa Clara City Library. Many of you guys recognize this picture, right? Right? You guys do this probably every single day, probably multiple times a day. What is this? Duh. Right? It's one of your most popular programs in the library. So I had this kind of crazy idea. You know, musical artists, when they're really popular, they go on tour, right? Right? So we're taking one of our most popular programs in the library and we're taking it on tour. It's going to different venues within the city, doing the same story time, the same thing you love in the library. We're just changing the venue a little bit. Here was the inspiration. I was actually in a hotel room and I was watching this lady and who is this lady? This is Beyonce, right? And she was doing the I Am Sasha Fierce tour, right? And she was dancing, she was singing, she was snapping her fingers, she was getting the audience involved. And I said, you know what, that's what I do every day. I do that as story time for like hundreds of people every day, 160 people every day. So why can't I do this in my own city at the library, outside the library, that is? So here was the first thought. You got to find the perfect location. Let me tell you, you guys can replicate this program. This is a very, very simple program, right? Just make sure to find the right location. Make sure you have a proper space for story time. Make sure it's kid-friendly, noise-friendly. Parking accessibility is really important. For example, I was doing this program at an animal shelter. I forgot that they only had 10 parking spaces in their parking lot. Bad idea if you're doing a story time, right? So it looked like a valet parking lot. People were parking like crazy and unfortunately we had a parking mess. And also, this program, simple as it is, it brings up a lot of opportunities for you and the library. Why? The reason why is this program, you're basically not only doing it for the audience, but you're also doing it for the businesses, corporations, and nonprofits that you're actually having it at that venue. They're also watching your program. If you bring in more people into their business, they're going to want you back again and again and again. They're going to want to work with you. And I'll give you some examples of that. So here's the hard part, right? You have this list of possible venues within your city, but how do you approach them? Now, I have to tell you, my background is in marketing and sales. So cold calling is not a foreign phenomenon to me. So just make sure to research location, but write a script. But I don't want you to write it fully verbatim as most of you do. Do it bullet points because then you'll sound more authentic, right? I always prefer to call. Now cold calling is not my favorite thing to do, but I'm going to tell you. I can make 10 phone calls in 10 minutes very easily. If I were to go to each venue, 10 venues, that would take me two days to get to every single place and talk to every single person. I love calling. Email is okay too, but I think it's a very, very passive way to get results. I'm very instantaneous. I like results very quickly, either yes or no. And I can tell you pretty much everybody that I talked to, I hadn't gotten one no in the time that I did this. Now when you do call or when you are in person, always get to the general manager. Do not go to the people at the desk, no, no, no. Go right to the top. They're the ones that are going to be making the decisions for that, whether you can do it or not. And then make sure to tell them what's in it for them. Make sure that's in there. I'm going to go over that a little bit and always ask for the contact information. Can't tell you how many times. Very simple. Make sure to ask for first and last name, phone number and email. There's so many Johns, so many Marys, so many Michaels. Make sure to get the right information because I remember restaurants, they turn over general managers like nothing. It's like this for them. So make sure to always get their contact information. So just a simple one. One of the pop-up story times that I did was at Pottery Barn. So diving into what's in it for them actually was their sale and clearance season, so they wanted to get rid of all their stuff. Also make sure to tell them they can get a captive audience of parents and kids for 30 minutes in their store. Let me tell you, getting people in your store for 30 minutes, even in the library, is a huge accomplishment, right? So make sure to tell that. And also make sure to tell them the average number of people that will be in the audience. But make sure to under promise and over deliver. If you think you're going to get 50 people, do not tell them you're going to get 50 people. No, no, no. Tell them you're going to get 25. Then when you get 50, they're going to be like, oh my gosh, Cheryl. Wow, this was great. Again, under promise, over deliver. Marketing and advertising. I have to tell you something a little secret about myself. I know you guys are probably going to hate me. I don't like flyers. I don't like to do them at all. I think they're kind of not a waste of time, but I'm kind of quick and fast. I like to do email blasts instead. I can get to probably 3,000 people in an email in a matter of seconds. Plus they get it on their smartphone, mobile device. They have it with them. They can forward it to their friends. They can email it. They can put it on social media. It's great. So my preference, no flyers. But again, it's up to you, plus word of mouth advertising. So with this program, I did no flyers. No flyers in the library, nothing. All word of mouth, all email blasts. Also, if you're thinking about doing pop-up story time, make sure to have a fixed date and time. We did it once a month. Make sure to try to. I know this is really hard for some of you guys in these big system libraries. Make sure to try to avoid conflicting program times and dates. You don't want to do the same program conflicting with something in the library. That's just a given. Also try to figure out a time that's really slow for businesses and non-profits. You want to choose, I chose a Thursday at 11 o'clock. Any restaurant is dead at that time. Probably the lunch hours when they pick up. Also, locations would vary. We would never repeat locations, even though a lot of them wanted us to repeat it over and over again. And the venues were only within city limits. And so, do me a favor. If you're going to do this, pick your best story time person. I don't want you to pick your rookie story time person because this person needs to convince, persuade, and grab the audience immediately. Because remember, your audience is not only the people in the audience, the parents and the kids, but it's also the business that you want to impress as well. Because again, you want to work with them again and again and again. So these are just a few venues that I had. We did one at California Pizza Kitchen. This was my first one. I couldn't believe it. We had around 42 kids and parents. It was crazy. And it was really great. And they got pizza coupons afterwards. So it actually was advantageous for the business. And in fact, after this program, they gave us summer reading coupons like nobody's business. They wanted to work with us again and again. Again as I mentioned Pottery Barn for Kids, perfect venue, why? They have the perfect furniture for kids, right? I mean perfect for story time. The other one, this is kind of obscure. A dentist's office. You wouldn't really think about doing story time at a dentist's office. It's not the most pleasurable place to be, right? Well, but this dentist actually was pretty cool. They actually had murals of airplanes in their dentist's office. And if you know kids, I know they love aviation and airplanes. So it was a great photo op for them to be able to take pictures with the planes. Also this one's a no brainer. This one is C is for craft. It's a craft store. Obviously we did the story time and then afterwards C is for craft actually did the craft. So it was advantageous not only for us, but for them as well. We had around, I think, 40 or 50 in there. Also plan toys. It's a no brainer as well. Toy stores always, always, always get kids in the building. So this one we had around 60. And if anybody, if you guys know what plan toys is, it's the toy trains they do for toddlers and preschoolers. And then this is kind of an unusual venue, but I'm sure you guys have one too. A garden. Right? A community garden. So this is Gamble Gardens. And this was actually done in May. And I had, I scratched my head and I'm going, how am I going to convince people to come to a garden? You know, it's not really the, it doesn't have anything, you know, real bells and whistles that happen there. But I was able to promote it in May, right? That's when all the flowers are in bloom. And plus parents always love to take pictures of their kids, right? And what a perfect picture opportunity, but in the garden, right? And so it was just a perfect opportunity. There was around, I think, 87 people in this one. And then of course my favorite. I had this dream, okay? So I was driving home on El Camino Real every day, going home. And I'd see this Tesla showroom. And it was empty. There would only be like a couple of people in suits like walking around next to the cars and I thought, God, that showroom has a beautiful tile space for story time. Plus kids love cars. And I love Tesla. So why not do story time there? And so actually some of the kids were in the car watching story time and I want to tell you the marketing piece to this one. So after we did the story time, you know, of course parents took photos of their kids in the cars. They posted on Facebook. They tagged us. It was great. So when I said, hey, thank you to the general manager, I sent them the link of our photos from the story time. I can't tell you. She asked me. She said, hey, Cheryl, do you mind if I post this on our Tesla, you know, you know, Facebook and Twitter? Okay. Go ahead. You will not believe the amount of people that actually saw this and like like the photos. Our analytics for social media went up 9,000% ridiculous. In fact, we had like 300 likes on one photo and the CEO of Tesla actually liked our photo and shared it with everybody. That was cool. So again, after the story time, you want to thank the general manager or the person who brought you there, right? Just all the photos, share it with them because again, like the Tesla showroom, it could really drive up your social media analytics. This is the one for Gamble Gardens as well. We posted immediately after the story time is done, probably like a day or so after or maybe a few hours afterwards as well, plus parents and kids love seeing photos of themselves. So these are some of the corporate partners that we worked with. As I mentioned before, we tried to spread it out within the city of Palo Alto. And then so how do you, so once you do one, how do you sustain it? So it's what I call rinse and repeat, do the same thing over and over and over again. And I'm telling you, you will have people reaching out to you, getting you to come to their business. In fact, I have a story for that. There was a startup in Palo Alto called Tangible Play. And with any startups, these young kids in this small space and they're on their computers and there's wires there and the one founder wanted me to do pop-up story time at their startup. And I'm going, I don't know about this, there's all these wires there, people laying on the floor, they did have a couch but it wasn't conducive to a pop-up story time. However, they did show me their product and I thought of another program for them that was actually very successful. It was called Appiar. And we'll talk about that now but I'll talk about that maybe some other time if you want to talk about it. So, so we did, so I did around 10 pop-up story times with over 500 attendees. So that's an average of around 50 people per story time. And it was able, it allowed us to gain a wider audience within the community and it cultivated more partnerships for us at the library. Again, like the Tangible Play, Tesla actually wanted us to do it again immediately afterwards. I had to turn them down, said next time, next year. But here's my big goal. As I told you, I am in Santa Clara now. I drive by this place every single day. I am a huge, huge Niner Fango Niners. Yesterday was a big win. And when I get my branch in order and when I get everything taken care of, again, I'm at a new branch here. We've been only open two months so I've got to get all the operations streamlined. But once that's done, you bet I'll be doing pop-up story time here first. So if you need anything from me, here's my contact information. Hopefully, I'd love to talk to you about it. Thank you.