Don't miss this month's Tuesday Learning Lab designed to
increase your network and enhance your professional growth

How to Win Business and Build Loyalty
with Effortless Client Stores

October 14, 2025
12:30 pm
Featured Speaker: Aaron Gadowski, Givee

Givee is a store solution that helps distributors win more business with less friction. It takes the complexity out of building and managing client stores so you can focus on selling, not admin. With Givee, distributors can offer a modern, digital-first experience that clients actually want and will drive repeat orders and stickier relationships.  

Key Takeaways:

- Stores are no longer a “nice-to-have.” They’re becoming the standard way clients expect to buy and gift. Givee makes them easy to pitch, launch, and scale.
- Distributors using Givee save time on order management and gain more repeatable revenue opportunities with their accounts.
- By bringing a modern solution to the table, you’re positioned as the partner who’s ahead of the curve in the promo industry.

About the Presenter: Aaron Gadowski is the Director of Product for Givee, a fast-growing store solution for gifting and ecommerce under PCNA. He has led Givee from concept to scale, growing it from just a handful of stores to hundreds live and transacting. His work focuses on making gifting easy and fun while driving measurable revenue impact for distributors and end-customers.

Before Givee, Aaron led product at Global-e (formerly Flow), where he scaled their international checkout solution and partnered directly with Shopify to launch Shopify Markets, enabling tens of thousands of merchants to sell globally.

Based in St. Petersburg, Florida, Aaron spends his time outside of work skiing whenever he can, and taking his corgi, Fred, on adventures.

Don't miss this month's Wild Wednesday Webinar designed to
increase your network and enhance your professional growth

How to Create a Marketing Plan for 2026
For Your Distributor Business

October 29, 2025
12:30pm
Featured Speaker: Gloria Lafont, Action Marketing

Set yourself up for success in the new year with a solid, doable plan that produces results.

In this webinar, you’ll build a comprehensive seven-step marketing plan designed to help you stay competitive, generate new leads, and get the most value from your current clients.

Takeaways:

• Overview of the online marketing channels you can tap into to maximize your leads and sales.
• Creating a playbook for implementation and success
• Tools to streamline and automate marketing tasks and generate more sales

About the presenter: Gloria Lafont is a mother, grandmother, and entrepreneur. Throughout her business career, she has started, bought, lost, and sold a dozen businesses, including a distributorship, which she sold in 2015. She currently owns Action Marketing, a digital marketing agency founded in 2007, specializing in advanced digital marketing, including SEO and Online Advertising, to generate leads and increase sales for promo distributors.

Gloria is a supporter of education and cultural arts, regularly volunteering her time and donating marketing support to help various organizations grow in membership and revenue. She enjoys family time, the beach, tech, and speaking engagements on topics of business growth and women's empowerment.

Don't miss this month's Tuesday Learning Lab designed to
increase your network and enhance your professional growth

Prompting for Profit: Unlocking AI's
Full Potential in Promo Sales & Marketing

November 11, 2025
12:30 pm
Featured Speaker: Cliff Quicksell, Cliff Quicksell & Associates

AI is no longer a futuristic tool, it’s here, and it’s revolutionizing how we create, market, and sell. Yet most professionals in the promotional products industry are barely scratching the surface of its potential. The secret to unlocking AI’s power lies in prompting, the art of asking the right questions, in the right way, to generate exceptional results. In this workshop, Cliff Quicksell, CSP, MAS+, MASI, will demystify prompt engineering and show you how to collaborate with AI as a true creative partner. You’ll leave with the knowledge, confidence, and actionable strategies to turn ChatGPT-5 into your competitive edge.

Five Key Takeaways:
1. The Formula for Exceptional Prompts - Discover the four-part formula: Clarity, Context, Constraints, and Iteration, that ensures every prompt you craft delivers useful, actionable, and high-impact results.
2. From Assistant to Collaborator - Learn how to treat ChatGPT-5 not as a task completer but as a creative teammate, capable of brainstorming, refining, and co-developing campaigns and strategies with you.
3. Crafting for Your Audience - Understand how to give AI the right context, audience demographics, tone, style, and desired outcomes, so your outputs are always client ready.
4. Practical Prompting in Action - See real-world promotional product scenarios, like campaign ideation, email drafting, packaging pitches, and ROI storytelling, transformed through effective prompting.
5. Building Your AI Toolkit - Walk away with a set of reusable prompts, techniques for refinement, and the mindset to continuously experiment, improve, and maximize your results with AI.

About the Presenter: Cliff Quicksell, CSP, MAS+, MASI, is a seasoned expert with over 40 years in promotional marketing. As a highly regarded speaker, trainer, and consultant, he has spent 40 years helping associations and national business groups enhance their marketing strategies, improve team motivation, and drive business growth. Cliff is the President of Cliff Quicksell Associates.

Please join CPPA for a fun evening out with industry friends
as we mingle, network and celebrate the Holiday season as well
as honor our Peake Awards Recipients!

Date:
December 11, 2025

Time:
6:00 to 9:00 pm

Location: 
Merriweather Lake House
10209 Wincopin Cir
Columbia, MD 21404

Cost: 
Members & Guests: $60 pp which includes a delicious buffet meal and one complimentary drink ticket.
Cash bar available.

Dress Code:
Cocktail Attire

Sponsorship opportunities available:
Bar Sponsor: $500 - 2 available
Spots are limited and on a first come, first served basis
Details are on the registration form

Product sponsorship opportunities available:
Please contact Tiffany if you would like to donate door prizes, party giveaways, decorations, etc.
The more the merrier!

In the spirit of the holiday season, CPPA will be collecting donations at the party for Toys for Tots which delivers hope to children during the holiday season and beyond. Please consider bringing a new unwrapped toy to spread love and cheer this holiday season!

We hope you will join us for an evening of fun as we toast to a successful 2025 and a prosperous 2026.