The month of October was crazy! The two masterclasses we held took up a lot of our time; each class requires weeks of preparation and it’s quite the feat for our teams to integrate the extra planning into their schedules. Since November is always a huge month because of Black Friday sales, it was a bit of a risk for us to hold both events in October. It was also the first time we organized two events in the same month, and a part of me isn’t sure if we’ll be doing that again!

If you’re reading this newsletter and attended one of our masterclasses, thank you SO MUCH for coming to spend the evening with us! Each event was incredible, worth every extra second of hard work. They really are some of my favourite evenings. I find it a precious gift to get the chance to meet you. I want to say an extra thank you on behalf of Opération Enfant Soleil because $10 from every ticket purchased went to the foundation. (Psssst, you can also buy Opération Enfant Soleil tickets for the Dream Passport Contest draw for $10 on the Womance website right here. It’s a great gift to add to a stocking or to treat yourself to, and you have a chance to win $172,000 in travel credits!)

Otherwise, things have been moving really fast at the office. Sarah, our content creator, is leaving us at the beginning of December for a new challenge (booooo). We are going to be really sad to see her go, but at the same time, I’m really proud when I see a woman decide to try something else because she wants another challenge. Before, whenever someone left the company, I would question myself so much, it was crazy! I wondered if I had done something wrong, if the company wasn’t good enough…but I’ve come to understand over the years that I can’t take people moving on personally. We can always improve as an organization of course, but often the reasons that people leave are beyond my control. Content creation isn’t often a job that people want to do for years on end, and we’re starting to understand that with both companies. It’s often an entry-level position in marketing that gives newcomers experience in the field, so we need to get used to seeing more turnover in this position. What saddens me the most is how much I looooooove Sarah. You can see through her posts that she’s cool, calm and kind, but she’s so much more in real life! We’ll definitely miss her legendary calm.

One good thing is that we’ve received some really promising resumes already. It’s actually a pretty complex position because whoever we hire also becomes the face of the company on social media, so it’s important to choose the right candidate. To give you an idea of our process, Anne-So (the Womance marketing coordinator who also oversees Sans-Façon) go through all the resumes and set aside the applications that meet our criteria. Then, Vanessa takes care of conducting telephone pre-interviews. Following her notes, we send “homework” to the candidates we are interested in. We ask them about different types of content creation to see how they work, take a look at their creative ideas, look for things like spelling mistakes, etc. The assignments give us a pretty quick idea of who we believe can meet our expectations. Usually we select about four people and then Anne-So and I conduct the interviews. Wish us luck in finding the perfect person!

Oh! Also we are having a lot of big sales and great discounts at Sans-Façon throughout the whole month of November! Keep an eye out on the site to find out about great new products or stock up on your favourites. Every Thursday, we have mystery deals that last for 24 hours and we have great sales lined up for the entire Black Friday weekend. And the second thing I’m so excited to tell you about is all that we have almost finished creating four new products! I’ll tell you all about them in the December entry.