Schedule

​Day 1 – Monday, November 9​

3:00 – 4:30 p.m. – Hotel Check-in – Foyer, First Floor

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3:00 – 4:30 p.m. – Registration – Foyer, Second Floor

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4:30 – 6:00 p.m. – Networking Reception – Capital Ballroom, Second Floor

 

Day 2 – Tuesday, November 10

8:00 – 9:00 a.m. – Breakfast Buffet – Foyer, Second Floor

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8:00 – 9:00 a.m. – Registration – Foyer, Second Floor

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9:00 – 10:15 a.m. – Welcome and Opening Session - Capital Ballroom, Second Floor - Sponsored by Zellus Marketing

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10:15 – 10:30 a.m. – Break

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10:30 – 11:30 a.m. – Session 2 - Capital Ballroom, Second Floor

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11:30 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. – Lunch Buffet - Foyer, Second Floor

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12:45 – 1:00 p.m. - Break

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1:00 – 2:00 p.m. – Breakout 1 - Capital Ballroom, Second Floor

The Strength of Talent: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Profit

Presenter: Mike Goldman

Organizations face a critical challenge: achieving company goals when team performance is not optimized. Alarmingly, in a study of 1,200 leaders, only 2% found their performance management systems to deliver exceptional value. This gap directly threatens growth, as people growth is the #1 driver of profit growth.

 

Leaders feel frustrated and overwhelmed by underperforming teams, ineffective talent management processes, and the emotional toll of making tough decisions. This misalignment results in stagnant growth, reduced fulfillment, and missed opportunities for meaningful impact.

 

To unlock the full potential of an organization, leaders must have a clear, actionable framework to assess talent, develop their people, and confidently transition individuals who aren’t a strong fit. With 35 years as a leadership performance expert, Mike Goldman created The Strength of Talent framework as the solution, introducing a new metric—the Talent Density Indicator—to track progress, drive accountability, and strengthen the team.

 

Leaving this presentation, you will:

1. Learn a 5-step process to maximize the performance of each member of their team and hold leaders accountable for developing their team members

2. Practice how to set clear expectations for each of your direct reports

3. Assess the performance of each of your direct reports

4. Create an action plan to leverage, develop, and retain your superstars

5. Decide which one of your low performers can be coached up and which need to be coached out

6. Calculate your Talent Density Indicator (TDI) to measure and benchmark the strength of talent on your team

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1:00 – 2:00 p.m. – Breakout 2 – Assembly Ballroom, Second Floor

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2:00 – 2:15 p.m. – Break

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2:15 – 3:15 p.m. – Breakout 3 - Capital Ballroom, Second Floor

M&A Update and Positioning Your Business to Sell

Presenter: Paul Evans

This session offers a current look at the M&A market, from what buyers are prioritizing to how valuations are determined to where deals are getting done. Learn the key steps owners can take to position their business for a successful sale, including improving financial clarity, reducing risk, strengthening management, and aligning your organization with what today’s buyers are willing to pay for.

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2:15 – 3:15 p.m. – Breakout 4 – Assembly Ballroom, Second Floor

The New SMB Playbook for AI

Presenter: Alan Pentz

The old SMB technology playbook was simple: wait for the big guys to prove it, buy the SaaS version, and integrate over a weekend. That playbook is dead.       

  

Alan Pentz trains, deploys, and invests in AI every day across metal fab shops, a government consulting firm, a newsletter reaching eighteen thousand owners, and six software products he's built in the last year. He teaches the method to owners in live cohorts and is writing the new playbook in public by doing the work.

 

The biggest mistake SMB owners are making right now isn't picking the wrong tool. It's drawing the wrong map of their own market.

 

Code is approaching free. Intelligence is priced by the token. Relationships, trust, and distribution are the only things AI can't replicate. Put those three on the same page, and your market doesn't look the way it used to. Your real TAM isn't the slice your competitors are fighting for. It's every vendor line and every salaried task inside your clients' businesses that an agent can do better than the incumbent.

 

This session offers a new playbook on:

• How to read your client's vendor map as expansion revenue

• How to bring a skeleton of agents, embed, and replace the software your clients are already paying for

• Where the labor line moves first on your P&L and where it moves on theirs

• What Greg's numbers tell you about whether any of it is actually working

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3:15 – 3:30 p.m. – Break

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3:30 – 4:30 p.m. – Session 3 - Capital Ballroom, Second Floor

Under Fire: What Combat, the West Wing, and Wall Street Taught Me About Leadership and Service

Presenter: Brian Kitching

Pressure is the price of leadership. Brian shares the moment-by-moment decision architecture that kept his soldiers alive, and how those same instincts apply when a deal falls through, a key employee walks, or the market turns against you.

 

From Joint Special Operations Command task forces to corporate turnarounds, Brian breaks down exactly how he built cultures where people outperformed their own expectations, and how you can do the same, starting today.

 

As one of the most decorated combat veterans to speak publicly about PTSD and mental health, Brian delivers a message that hits differently: the strongest leaders he's ever met were the ones who knew when to ask for help.

 

Whether coordinating six federal agencies or scaling a fintech operation, Brian's framework for defining mission, aligning team, and executing with discipline gives small business owners a proven operating model.

 

Day 3 – Wednesday, November 11

8:00 – 9:00 a.m. – Breakfast Buffet – Foyer, Second Floor

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9:00 - 10:00 a.m. - Session 4 - Capital Ballroom, Second Foyer

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10:00 - 10:15 a.m. - Break

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10:15 – 11:15 a.m. – Breakout 5 - Capital Ballroom, Second Floor

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10:15 – 11:15 a.m. – Breakout 6 - Assembly Ballroom, Second Floor

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11:15 – 11:30 a.m. – Break

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11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. – Closing Session - Capital Ballroom, Second Floor - Sponsored by Sage Business Counsel

Escaping the Algorithm: Growing Your Business in the Post-Digital Era​

Presenter: Shawn Busse

Digital marketing is in decline. Costs are up, returns are down, and AI is flooding the market with infinite content. For businesses that have built their growth strategy on SEO, PPC, and paid social, the math is getting worse every year, and it’s not coming back.

 

Meanwhile, the culture is shifting. We’re banning phones in schools, dragging social media companies into court, and losing trust in the platforms we’ve been told to build our businesses on. People are exhausted, and they’re looking for something different.

 

Shawn Busse has spent his career helping businesses find growth strategies that don’t depend on algorithms. In this session, he’ll make the case for why the old digital playbook is breaking down. And why remarkability is the biggest growth opportunity in an era of AI-fueled sameness.

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12:30 p.m. – Conference concludes

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*All session times are in Central Standard Time

*Schedule and Locations are Subject to Change