The Chicks On The Right CAMPTONO Meet And Greet Finally Happened, And We Gotta SPILL SOME TEA!

We are returning today from Tampa after an absolutely exhilarating and exhausting long weekend with 375 of our new BFFs, and we are just filled with gratitude and amazement about this wonderful community of folks who turned up to CampTono!

We’ll give you the play by play of the weekend’s events in our deep dive podcast this week, but the purpose of this post is to reveal a little backstory about how this entire event came to be, and to address a few things that just need addressing.

First things first. This weekend was our first opportunity to meet the incredible team of folks who make our podcast possible – the fantastic crew at Radio America. We’ve had countless zoom meetings and phone calls and video chats and emails exchanges with them, but have never had the opportunity to hug them until this past weekend. And somehow, it was both exactly what we expected and a million times better than we expected all at the same time. Hopefully, if you attended CampTono, you got a chance to meet Mike, Rich, Jenn, and Vallen – who worked their assular areas off alongside us the whole weekend making sure that things went as smoothly as they could.

They arrived on Friday afternoon, about 2 hours after Daisy and I received a U-haul sized delivery of packages containing gifts for our guests from our amazing sponsors, as well as gift bags that we bought and used to assemble everything. And then the 6 of us got right to work – no rest for the travel-weary!

Which brings me to the sponsors. It’s because of Jenn that we have sponsors at all – she is our number one cheerleader and she knows how to tell our story better than anyone else. And the sponsors of this event went above and beyond to spoil our guests. Genucel, our title sponsor, sent the cutest sample packets from their skin care line for everyone, and even included adorable branded discount cards for every single attendee. Just look at this!

I mean, can you even? Someone had to put those together, you guys. 375 of them, even. And after unwrapping and unfolding gift bags and tissue paper, and painstakingly lining them up in rows to drop goodies into them for 4 hours straight, we have a newfound appreciation for the work and effort it takes to prepare these kinds of things.

Healthycell also made sure that every attendee received sample packets of four different kinds of their amazing supplements. The fantastic people at My Pillow sent 24 boxes full of travel pillows so every attendee could take one home. Bryan from Grateful American Apparel, who produced the official CampTono t-shirts for the event, ALSO sent enough patriotic t-shirts for every guest to take one home. Insider Sue sent handmade crocheted scrubbies to include in everyone’s gift bag. Insider Carmen made COTR stickers for everyone. I mean, we just couldn’t have been more delighted to be able to send every attendee home with something amazing, thanks to the folks just mentioned.

This is probably a good time to mention that Daisy and I are not, have never been, and never WANT to be event planners. But we are patting ourselves on the back a little now for pretty much putting this entire thing together on our own. Jenn brought the sponsors on board, but the event itself was coordinated entirely by me and Daisy. We enlisted insider Sherri to book travel/accommodations/activities for us and the guests, and she did an amazing job getting people there, getting them lodging, and getting them TOGETHER to take part in activities external to the actual event. We secured the venue, we hired the caterer, we arranged for the tents and chairs, we arranged for the cash bar and bartenders, we figured out how to sell tickets on line and then use an app to get people checked in, we sourced and hired a security team (who ended up being some of our new favorite people in the whole wide world). The folks from DAS Executive Protection were AMAZEBALLS.

SIDE NOTE: Everyone on socials is freaking out about my height, but in my defense, I’m wearing flip flops and Daisy’s in heels. She’s a good 3-4 inches taller than me when we’re barefoot, but when she’s in heels and I’m not, it’s like half a foot, so I AM AWARE that I look like a pocket person in that photo. 🙂

Anyway, my point in telling you about some of what went into the planning is that we had no idea what we were doing, but we figured it out as best we could, and overwhelmingly heard from so many attendees that they had a fantastic time. We were OVERJOYED that somehow, even after it poured buckets of rain during much of the day prior to the event, by the time it was ready to kick off at 5pm, it was mostly dry. It was brutally hot, but at least it stayed dry. And we were doubly overjoyed to see the happy smiling faces of SO MANY PEOPLE who came out to see us, and who stood in line to have a chance to give and get hugs and photos with us. It just was a total delight to meet everyone.

It was also so special to see the friendships made online turn into real, honest-to-goodness friendships – we followed along the Insiders and Supporters as they posted photos from all of the get-togethers they had in the days leading up to the main event, and it just completely blew us away. We’ll be sharing tons o’ photos that Vallen took soon, along with videos too, for those of you who couldn’t make it. I know some folks on our regular FB page and in our regular FB group were getting antsy for photos, and you’ll see them soon! But honestly the best pics are the ones taken by the attendees themselves, and those are only available in the Insiders and Supporters groups. You’re encouraged, as always, to find your people there!

It was super important to us to have an opportunity to meet face to face with every last person who came to our event and WANTED personal time with us – whether it was for a quick photo opp or a hug or a book signing or whatever, and amazingly, we pulled it off with just a few minutes to spare before we got kicked out of the place. That’s what was most important to us – to get up close and personal with our most faithful following – and to make sure y’all know how special you are. We knew we wouldn’t sit down, or eat, or even really move from the spot in the room we started out in, and that was just fine with us. We just can’t tell you how meaningful it is to see the community we’ve built come together like that. By the time we were whisked away by security and then back in our hotel room, exhausted but exhilarated, we were starting to see posts and messages and photos from the attendees who couldn’t have been more appreciative and supportive and happy and it all just made US so happy too. It was the perfect afterglow. I mean, just look at this amazing group, y’all.

Just amazing.

I bring up the afterglow on Sunday morning only because it has been somewhat overshadowed by some complaining that’s been happening from a handful of people since. While the most brutal thread we’ve seen seems to have been deleted, we were tagged in it initially and it was so incredibly hurtful, such a joy-killer, that I was nearly in tears over it. Then the hurt turned into total rage for both of us which we haven’t really recovered from. I think the rage was less about the complaint itself, the sentiment of which we knew wasn’t shared by the overwhelming majority of attendees, but more about having to be subjected to that negativity when we were on such a high from all the kindness people had shown to us the night before. Apparently, some folks were not happy with the Westin, which is weird since Westins are generally considered to be consistently good. We weren’t there, so we don’t have direct knowledge of the problems. We had the same travel agent as everyone else and we were staying a couple blocks from the Westin at the Marriott on Water Street because we didn’t want to risk people seeing us putting the gift bags together in advance. But we do know that travel agents aren’t personally responsible for the accommodations – they just BOOK the accommodations. And they book based on ratings/price/amenities – it’s not like they personally visit every hotel (or every individual room) in advance. It’s upsetting to see negativity after such a soul-touching experience, and to see what appears to be some in-fighting going on with the attendees as a result. The whole long weekend was a complete love-fest, and there is really no adequate way to describe the amount of love we felt from our community, which is why that complaint and the handful we saw even in this morning’s livestream comments have been such a downer. It’s like the hair on the otherwise beautiful birthday cake.

Daisy and I consoled ourselves after seeing that FB post by going to a lovely lunch in Hyde Park Village in Tampa to discuss how we might respond to it all, and thought it would be cathartic to write this post and eliminate any potential confusion about how this event came together in the first place.

To reiterate, as far as we know, the complaints are fairly isolated, and not at all the universal experience of most guests. But it’s a very tight knit community we’ve built – and so it has felt personal and therefore extra ouchy.

First there was the demand for us to “get a different company” to help plan the next Meet and Greet, in order to avoid another “clusterf*ck and disaster.”

Y’all. I can’t stress this enough. We didn’t HAVE a company to help plan. So getting a different company would mean firing…ourselves. Which would mean simply not having another Meet and Greet. And here’s why we didn’t have an event planning company. Event planning companies cost money – a lot of money. And even after trying to be practical and budget conscious by putting most of this shindig on by ourselves, by the time it’s all said and done we will likely have lost money on the whole thing or at best we’ll hopefully – HOPEFULLY – break even. Had Jenn not secured some sponsorship, we’d absolutely be in the red. Like – deeply deeply in the red.

But the complaint didn’t end there. Apparently we didn’t spend enough time with each of the 375 attendees (if y’all have ideas for how we can cram more personal visit time with 375 people in a four hour window, we’re all ears!), there wasn’t enough room, the food was terrible and not worth the money, we didn’t provide an open bar, and on and on.

Ouch.

We had BBQ catered in, and heard great reviews about it from a ton of people who enjoyed it. I can’t vouch for it personally, since we never got a second to actually eat any of it, but it seemed to go over pretty well with most folks. We couldn’t afford to cover everyone’s bar tab; hence the cash bar. I’m not sure what “wasn’t worth the $” since the point of the event was to give everyone a chance to meet each other and to meet us and to delight in each other’s company in person. The ticket price was just to cover the multitude of expenses that come with hosting an event of this magnitude, not to provide a steak and lobster dinner.

We stood and took photos and talked with folks for basically four straight hours, and we were happy to do it, because that was the point. When we learned at around 8.50pm (the event ended at 9) that we had managed to meet every last person who was in the line to meet us, we were thrilled and also in a state of total disbelief that we’d somehow pulled it off. And the moment was captured!

THAT was the point of the event. That right there.

Again, the overwhelming sentiment from the event was positive, but we felt it was worth addressing this in case there are lingering questions from anyone about how this all came together.

Our next Meet and Greet will be held April 29 in Phoenix, and we have decisions to make now about how to manage that in light of what we learned this past weekend. Perhaps we cap the event to fewer people so that we have time to more meaningfully interact with the guests. Undoubtedly that would leave many people feeling left out, which we hate. Or perhaps we should expect that the next event will be partly reunion and partly Meet and Greet, and we can announce that people who have never met us before get priority in the “receiving line” (for lack of a better word). We’re planning on doing these every 6 months or so, in a different part of the country each time, so we can meet as many of our fans/followers as possible. And we are reluctant to just rent out a theater and talk at you for 30 minutes like the big name famous people do – only to never have a chance to actually meet you. But that’s what would have to happen if we increase the guest list size, so you see our dilemma. We know we can’t please everyone, but by golly we’re doing our best to make these events special and unique and personal, and to stay true to who we are and why we wanted to do them to begin with.

Thank you SO SO SO SO MUCH to every last one of you who came out to see us in Tampa, for your patience waiting in line, and for even wanting to wait in line in the first place to meet two complete dorks like us. Like we said the other night…we truly believe that we were all meant to be in that place, at that time. And y’all mean the absolute world to us.

CAMPTONO FOREVER.