Today we’d like to introduce you to Sandy Wirth.
Hi Sandy, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I have been rescuing family memories for almost 25 years!
I have always been sentimental and was creating scrapbook albums for myself since grade school. I started as a consultant with Creative Memories when I decided to “retire” from my corporate job to stay home with my kids. I knew I still wanted to still have a career and this fit perfectly with our family life. While the business was first centered on traditional scrapbooking events and supplies it evolved along with the times – with the advent of digital photography. Then, as formats for other media changed (no more VHS tapes, slides, film reels, audio cassettes, even DVDs), I added the service to covert the treasured memories on those obsolete formats to digital to my business model as well.
The more I was involved with digital photos, I realized how many people were overwhelmed with the chaos of all the places, media types and services that their memories were spread across. So I help them get control of this – gathering everything into one safe place where they can be easily organized, saved and shared and celebrated.
So now, I can help my clients with pretty much every aspect of memory keeping – from digitizing vintage media, to printed and digital photo organizing support, to helping them create custom photo books and all sorts of gifts and most importantly safeguarding them for the future.
I often say I love making people cry! Those happy tears come when they’ve heard a loved ones voice again, or get to re-live special moments with their families. It’s the best!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has been mostly smooth. When I work with my clients they are usually so happy to make progress on a goal that has been on their to do list forever!
Struggles? Educating people – they don’t realize all the risks to their memories – from how/where they are stored, to big and small disasters (tornadoes, home fires or even a leaky pipe and computer crashes/lost phones for digital), from not having multiple copies of important memories, or using cloud services that don’t have their best interests in mind. I have met many people who have lost everything – from even those well known cloud services, as they don’t guarantee that what you are paying them to back up will always be there. Most people have no idea – because who reads the fine print when they create their accounts? I know I am guilty myself!
We’ve been impressed with Your Memories Matter, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
My business revolves solely around protecting, sharing, and celebrating memories. I love to help take the overwhelm out of the process of taming the chaos that are our photos and other memories.
It makes me so happy to see people rediscover moments they’d forgotten, and bond with family members over some long buried memories. One of my favorite stories was a family whose members were literally spread from coast to coast throughout the US. They had their parents’ old slides digitized – most of which they hadn’t seen in 40 odd years. I was friends with one of the siblings so I was privileged to see their reconnections play out over Facebook when one of the other siblings began sharing these awesome 1960’s Kennedy era DC military family photos – and dozens of family members and friends began commenting and sharing more remembrances!
I work with my clients to determine what they have, what is important to keep and how to capture their stories. What is it that they want in the end to share with their family? This includes gathering physical items – old media like videos, film reels, slides, audio recordings, negatives, photo albums and printed photos – but also all those places we have our digital memories scattered – websites, CDs, hard drives, old computers and phones etc. We want to ultimately have one place where they all reside and are safe and easily accessible – a permanent interactive family archive!
Then, how do they want to celebrate those memories? Do they also want to make photo albums (traditional or created online and printed), photo gifts, etc. I have options for it all. I can help a little with guidance and recommendations or help more extensively with doing some of the work for them.
I have a two preferred vendors I use/recommend to my clients. I am an Advisor with Creative Memories, the leader in traditional scrapbooking – and I carry a full inventory of their products. I am also an Ambassador for FOREVER.com – the only company that exists to truly safeguard people’s memories for the future.
FOREVER is the company that will digitize the old media. But then, most importantly, they provide the only private, permanent and guaranteed cloud storage that exists. You own the space in the cloud – not rent with a monthly fee. And it is backed by a financial instrument not unlike what an insurance company uses or an endowment at a university. It is also bank level encrypted..
Your memories will never be deleted., and you can even pass them down. It is super user friendly for organizing and sharing! No one is thinking about the permanence of our memories like we do. The other large photo sites are data mining us, are not necessarily backups, often just syncs, and definitely do not guarantee that those memories will be there even if you are paying them a fee. FOREVER is unique in our industry and I am so glad I found them and can help others get this peace of mind!
I host events so that my clients can make progress on their memories – because I know time constraints and motivation are two factors that keep us from tackling this important “project”. I do three 4-day Photo Retreats at hotels/retreat centers each year, I am a vendor at another weekend event that I invite my clients to and I do two Fri/Saturday events as well. I also host weekday work sessions as well as zoom get togethers. At the in-person events folks are working on everything from printed and digital photo organizing to paper scrapbooking or creating photo albums digitally with our custom software. And I am there to provide instruction, answer questions and be their cheerleader!
What do you like and dislike about the city?
I was born and raised in the St. Louis area and have always been such a big fan of all it offers. I grew up up in the suburbs, but went to St. Louis University and hung out at the West End (worked at the Chase) and the Landing a lot during those days – so much fun. Just seeing the Arch as you approach whether heading downtown or coming home from a trip just gives me all the feels!
I of course love all the things we ALL love about our town – the free Zoo and Museums, the Park (my daughter just got married at the lovely Jewel Box!) and other awesome institutions, but it is also the different neighborhoods with their own personalities that I love. Oh yeah – also the food!
I actually lived in New York after doing Grad School in South Carolina, so I was gone for about six years. But when it was time to have kids – I wanted to raise them in St. Louis and headed home and haven’t looked back!
What do I like least? I know this is super divisive, but I dislike the separation of the city and county, I believe we have some missed opportunities to better the whole region because of it. I wish we could figure out how to have a truly vibrant, inhabited downtown.
Pricing:
- Videos $15 each
- Get a $20 gift code for creating an account with me here: www.forever.com/ambassador/sandywirth
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.yourmemoriesmatter.net
- Instagram: @sandywirth
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SandyWirth.YourMemoriesMatter.Forever.CreativeMem
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandywirth/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/your-memories-matter-st-louis
- Other: https://www.forever.com/ambasador/sandywirth
