EQ Leadership Labs: The Best of the Breakouts

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Ellen Prinzi

Before we officially close the door on the inaugural EQ: Leadership Labs, let’s look back at some of the best moments from the Breakout sessions. If you didn’t get the chance to attend last month, the day was broken out into sessions that focused on four tracks, Marketing and Influence, Sales and Growth, Intention and Leadership, and Culture and Change.

The roster of speakers and presenters came from all over the world (literally), and dropped some serious knowledge on how to be a better leader, invoke change in your organization, or learn how to best market yourself or your services to achieve greater success.

Marketing & Influence Track

The Best Ad Creative Ever: A Template for Great Marketing AND Leadership

Tom Ruwitch, Founder and President @ MarketVolt
Tom Ruwitch kicked off the day for the Marketing & Influence Track. He revealed the best ad he’s ever seen and deconstructed it to unveil its secrets. This ad’s building blocks showcased a blueprint for improving marketing and sales.

Google Analytics as Business Intelligence Tool

Thom Craver, Lead SEO Analyst @ CBS Interactive
Measuring your website is vital to understanding not how your site is performing. But more importantly, it helps you understand people discover and consume your content. Going beyond measuring visitors and page views to find the stories hidden in your data can sometimes be tricky and takes a little outside-the-box thinking.

Discoverable, Shareable & Memorable

Mel Carson, Founder and CEO @ Delightful Communications
First impressions are important, both in person and online. Mel gave actionable advice on how to uncover your personal brand, establish your professional purpose, and shape your story.

Building A Digital Marketing Team to Go Beyond the Basics

Simon Heseltine, VP of Audience Growth @ Trader Interactive
Presenter Simon Heseltine presented tactical strategies that can immediately to take your basic website to the next level.

SEO and the Customer Journey: Stop Selling – Start Helping!

Mike Grehan, CMO & Managing Director @ Acronym
This session covered understanding intent and the importance of early-stage content. The ‘intention economy’ grows around the buyer, not the seller. Yet so much more attention is paid to developing content online designed to sell, not to help and create an emotional connection.

Using Content and Media to Position Yourself as a Leader

Dustin McKissen, Editor-at-Large @ Entrepreneur Quarterly
In this session, EQ Editor-at-Large Dustin McKissen will shared practical, actionable tips on growing your leadership brand using content and strategic media placements.

Sales & Growth Track

How Coaching Impacts Sales Performance: What AI Learned from 50 Companies that Grew >100% in 2018

Parth Mukherjee, Head of Product Marketing at Chorus.ai
Your entire sales cycle is dependent on conversations. What reps say on cold calls or meetings determines conversion rates. In this session, Parth Mukherjee, Head of Product Marketing at Chorus.ai walked us through a data-driven story of what makes some sales teams more successful than others. Sales managers and leaders learned best practices in coaching and data-based decision making adopted by high-growth companies.

Being a Sales Focused Founder/C Level Executive

Panel Discussion with:

  • Luke Babich, co-founder and CSO @ Clever Real Estate
  • Drew Winship, CEO and co-founder @ Juristat
  • Allison Bischoff, co-founder and COO @ Rozzy Learning Company
  • Marc Bernstein, founder and CEO @ Balto

Hiring The Right People & Onboarding Them

Panel Discussion with:

  • Jaime Nunnelee, President @ NSR Talent
  • Tom Hanrahan, Head of Sales @ Square
  • Jason Boone, Veteran & Military Sourcing Leader @ Lockheed Martin
  • Steve Williams, Vice President of Sales @ EmpInfo

Building A Sales Process That’s Repeatable & Executable

Panel Discussion with:

  • Jake Bernstein, Senior Business Development Manager @ Bonfyre
  • Amy Kohl, President @ AK Operations
  • Ryan O’Neil, CEO @ Curate

Best Practices for SDR Teams: Cadences That Book Meetings

Panel Discussion with:

  • Andrea Lydon, Director, Global Sales Development @ Gainsight
  • Jennifer Balogh, Account Executive @ SiriusDecisions
  • Krystal Diel. Manager of Business Development @ Jane.ai
  • William Pappa. Sales Director @ Mintigo

Using Social Media to Drive Your Sales Pipeline

Panel Discussion with:

  • Michael Seaman, CEO @ SwipeSum
  • Carson Heady, Author, “Birth of a Salesman” & Sales Leader @ Microsoft
  • Morgan J. Ingram, Director of Execution and Evolution at JBarrows Sales Training
  • Scott Barker, Head of Partnerships at Sales Hacker

Intention & Leadership Track

Places as Teachers: Global Lessons and Local Application

Travis Sheridan, President @ CIC Venture Café Global Institute
“The World is a Big Place and Full of Lessons Around Every Corner.”

During this talk, Travis shared key learnings from across the globe that should be top of mind for those involved in the innovation community. Also discussed were ways to turn an organization into a learning environment that looks for lessons in atypical places.

Leadership as a Practice in Presence

Jo Pang, People Partner @ Slalom
Now is the era for mindful leaders with deep self-understanding and the ability to connect authentically and who can lead with presence, ease, and positivity in the midst of change and complexity. In this talk, Jo Pang explored mindfulness as a key leadership practice to bridging the chasm between who we are and who we want to be as leaders.

Self-Care for Entrepreneurs

Shane Freeman, Principal @ okapi
Shane Freeman, a self-proclaimed ‘walking Venn diagram’ of SaaS product development, marketing, and sales, shared his expertise and personal journey on how to blend the demands of company development while maintaining the health of your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies.

Burnout to Business

Mike Kitko, Executive Self-Mastery Coach
Why does burnout happen? How can it be prevented? Mike explained how to go from corporate disaster to thriving company, all while reclaiming your power, your life, and your living.

The Leadership Push meets The Polarized Team

Bob Ramsey (Author, Speaker, Coach) and Valerie Rasche (Business Consultant, Personable Speech Coach)
Teamwork that wows often comes from leadership that has wowed the team. This talk explored research-driven leadership style tips in an engaging and interactive way from Bob and Val.

Human Centered Leadership

Panel Discussion with:

  • Alejandro Cornejo, Leadership Development Training Facilitator at Emerson
  • Daniel Fogarty, VP of Growth at LaunchCode
  • Tyler Mathews, Executive Director at Venture Cafe STL
  • Marc Bowers, Executive Director and Founder, St. Louis Makes

Leadership Is Listening

Oliver Cox, Business Development Manager @ Longneck & Thunderfoot
In this session, Oliver Cox explained how letting go of your words allows you to communicate more effectively, and how the act of listening transforms a conversation from a battle for airtime into a non-zero-sum game.

Culture & Change Track

Storytelling in St. Louis: Media Literacy for Entrepreneurs

Panel Discussion with:

  • Allison Babka, Editor-in-Chief, theSTL.com
  • David Nicklaus, Business columnist at St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  • Danyelle Little, Director of Social Media and Digital Marketing for The Big 550 KTRS Radio
  • Natasha Casey, Associate Professor of Communications at Blackburn College

This session explored aspects of media literacy and shared some practical insights into the journalism craft, media production processes, and what it really takes for media organizations to be responsible for the stories they report.

Having Open, Honest, Inclusive and Difficult Conversations Through Digital Storytelling

Cami Thomas, Red Bull Culture Marketing & Documentary Film Director
Through powerful digital storytelling tactics, Cami Thomas taught how a camera can be the force that brings the world together.

Conscious Capitalism 101

Tyler Kelley, Co-Founder & Chief Strategist at SLAM! Agency
In this interactive session, Tyler Kelley of SLAM! Agency, introduced how business, when practiced consciously, innately elevates humanity. Learn what it takes to become a Conscious Capitalist and how you can incorporate Conscious Capitalism in your business and in our community.

Your Biggest Opportunity Doesn’t Look Like You

LaShana Lewis, CEO @ L. M. Lewis Consulting
Products and services are still largely maintained, created, and produced by the culturally hegemonic employee base. Yet, people only buy what they see themselves in. This talk focused on how to show that your product or service targets a diverse market.

The Air Your Organization Breathes

Bijal Desai-Ramirez, Founder @ The Peepul Tree
Your company’s culture is no less than the air that flows through every aspect of your company, sight unseen. We learned how to pump good air into startups with greater intention, care, and thoughtful leadership from day one.

Fund Hacking: How Crowdfunding Is Revolutionizing Business Capital

Panel Discussion with:

  • Ched Wagner. Manager @ Nvsted
  • Ryan Brennel, CEO & Co-Founder @ Gladitood
  • Jeff Stevens, Founder @ WellBeing Brewing
  • Ryan Sim, Managing Director – Marketing & Business Development @ We The People

Nvsted’s Ched Wagner and Gladitood’s Ryan Brennell explained how crowdfunding is changing the small business world and how founders can use it to their advantage. Presentation included insights from Ryan Sim (We The People) and Jeff Stevens (WellBeing Brewing) about how they used crowdfunding to take their brands to the next level.