Our franchise family recently gathered in Music City, Nashville, Tennessee for our annual conference.

This year’s theme was… HARMONY!

Intentional blending of different parts to create something stronger and more impactful.

In a time where we experience discord in the world around us, we want to be the ones bringing the harmony and joy to every situation we encounter. Our franchise is a beautiful blend of unique personalities and abilities that have all come together to create a strong unified brand, and we want to hold on to that unity as we continue to grow.

Four days, we came together to learn & be inspired, improve our skills, recognize our achievements, and fellowship.

We kicked off the week with our top franchise earners for an all-inclusive experience before our conference began at the 121 Hotel.

Our local Nashville franchise owner, Will Smith, hosted a lovely dinner for us at his house to begin our time together. These owners were able to learn about and work on a forecasting model for each of their businesses and then we enjoyed a night out in Nashville with an Old Dominion show at the iconic Ryman Auditorium.

Check out more of our time together in this video…

 

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Learn & Be Inspired

This year many of our owners brought some of their photographers and staff. The first day we all met together at the 121 Hotel.

We began with the State of the Franchise, Worked on Goals for the Year, Heard Strategies for Growth from our top earners, headshots, roundtable discussions conducted by owners to focus on specific areas of our business, and lots of conversations among friends and fellow franchise owners!

Songwriting Showcase Team Building Activity

One of our owner’s favorite activities each year, is the team building activity. We couldn’t have a Harmony themed conference in Nashville without a little songwriting! Our conference committee helped collaborate on the details of this activity for the months leading up to conference. Brittany Evans took the lead to make sure we executed this activity well for everyone involved. Our 5 groups each chose a famous country song out of a bowl. They were given a word bank of at least 30 words related to Spoiled Rotten Photography and our business.  Each team had 1 hour to rewrite the lyrics with an SRP theme, create props, and choreograph a presentation. This activity brought fun, frustration, and key takeaways for everyone involved.

Of course, we always have to add an element of competitiveness to our team building activities and the Support Team choose a category for which each group shined the brightest.

 

Check out the video with some of the amazing song remixes to get a good laugh!

 

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Improve Our Skills

We spent time learning how to use our Spring set, Dreamy Meadow.  We truly strive to create a beautiful, authentic, portraits that will be cherished forever…. not just a school photo!  One of the ways we refine our skills is through our print competition. We enlisted 2 esteemed judges Cindy Shaver and Cindy Hornsby to judge our work before we came together at conference. Their scores determined merits and category winners.

Here are the 1st place winners in each category… and see the slide show for all our award winning images!

Recognize Achievements

Each year we recognize franchise owners who have performed well, contributed to their communities or have shown our core values to the upmost degree.

Click Here for ALL 2025 franchise awards

The highest award that a franchise owner can be awarded is the Purple Crown Award.  The Purple Crown Award is the highest accolade that we award one franchise owner each year who excels in all our core values from the previous year. This year’s recipients, our Buckhead, GA owners, Lynn and Rernardo Driver.

Congratulations Lynn and Rernardo Driver and Team!   We applaud you for meeting and exceeding each of our core values!

💜 Be Joyful
💜 Respect Others
💜 Positive Impact
💜 Do What’s Right
💜 Be Generous
💜 Exceed Expectations

 

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This coveted award has been held in the hands of Elizabeth Bailey, Will Smith, Heather Sams, Christine Mamon and Patricia Mesi, Scott and Kara Kellner, Joey and Sandi Fotheringham.

Celebration

This year Spoiled Rotten Photography celebrates its 22nd year Anniversary since this boutique preschool photography business began in Huntsville, AL. When Melissa Tash discovered she could make a living for her family focusing solely on photographing preschoolers she knew she had to share this concept with other families and the franchise was birthed 10 years later.

Fellowship

Do you love your work family?  I do!  It is an amazing blessing to work with people who you not only share your core values with, but you genuinely, LOVE!  It is an honor to serve them and do life with them!   Here is our annual group portrait from our awards dinner at the Thistle Farms Cafe.

Check out some of the fun our owners had together at conference in the video below. One of the owner’s favorite things about conference is coming together to socialize, bounce ideas off one another, and strengthen existing relationships.

 

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Welcoming New Family Members

We meet monthly on a zoom call, but we had several new family members to meet face to face and hug.

Welcome to our newest owners… Lauren and Coulter Wickerham, Katie and Travis Jennings, and Territory Managers…. Natalie Simpson and Avery Fryman