Advance: Key Note Workshops

Connect and Learn
From the Best

Acumen Members engage in a catalytic Leadership Workshop called “Advance.” Advance is an all-community (all affinity teams participate) with industry-leading, best-of-class instruction and training on sharpening leadership effectiveness, influence, and impact. All Members of the Acumen community are encouraged to include their top key leaders in this catalytic, high-energy gathering. Additionally, Advance affords Members from all teams to gather, network, and build relationships across teams.

Previous Advance Workshop Speakers

Bruce Tulgan | Demystifying the Next Generation: Be the Leader Your Young Talent Needs
Demystifying the Next Generation: Be the Leader Your Young Talent Needs

 

Bruce Tulgan headshot71Io65sT15L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_Bruce Tulgan is an adviser to business leaders all over the world and a sought-after keynote speaker and seminar leader. He is the founder and CEO of RainmakerThinking, Inc., a management research and training firm, as well as RainmakerLearning, an online training resource. Bruce is the best-selling author of numerous books including Not Everyone Gets a Trophy, Bridging the Soft Skills Gap, The 27 Challenges Managers Face (2014), and It’s Okay to be the Boss. His newest book, The Art of Being Indispensable at Work, is available now from Harvard Business Review Press. Bruce lectures at the Yale Graduate School of Management, as well as other academic institutions. He has written for the New York Times, the Harvard Business Review, and HR Magazine, and writes regularly for Training Magazine, Forbes.com, and Psychology Today. Since 1995, Bruce has worked with tens of thousands of leaders and managers inhundreds of organizations. In recent years, Bruce was named by Management Today as one of the few contemporary figures to stand out as a “management guru” and he was named to the 2009 Thinkers50 Rising Star list. On August 13, 2009, Bruce was honored to accept Toastmasters International’s most prestigious honor, the Golden Gavel. Bruce is a lifelong practitioner of Okinawan Uechi Ryu Karate Do and holds a seventh degree black belt, making him a Kyoshi master in that style. He lives in New Haven, CT with his wife Debby Applegate, Ph.D., who won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for her book The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (Doubleday, 2006). Her new book, Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age, is available now from Doubleday.

 

Michael Brody-Waite | Uncomfortable Work & the Addictive Leadership System
Uncomfortable Work & the Addictive Leadership System

 

Michael headshot 2Great Leaders cover image

Michael’s TEDx Nashville YouTube video, “Great Leaders Do What Drug Addicts Do,” provides insight into his twenty-year journey from addiction to successful entrepreneurship. It is the number one talk in the history of TEDx Nashville, with over 3 million views from people in 25+ countries.

In 2010, Michael left a Fortune 50 company at the height of the recession to cofound and lead InQuicker, a healthcare SaaS company that allowed patients to self-schedule appointments online. Under his leadership, the organization grew to 20,000 percent revenue growth, landing InQuicker a spot on the Inc. 500 list of Fastest-Growing Private Companies. Additionally, the organization was named one of the “Best Places to Work” four times and recognized as Healthcare Company of the Year. After selling InQuicker to a publicly-traded company in 2015, Michael served for three years as the CEO of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, a 501c3 that helps over 2,000 entrepreneurs start or grow a business yearly.

His accomplishments include being named a Most Admired CEO, named to the Top 40 Under 40, and recognized by the Nashville Chamber of Commerce as Healthcare Entrepreneur of the Year. 

Today, Michael is on a mission to teach individuals, organizations, and communities how to lead themselves as the CEO of Addictive Leadership. Michael is changing the face of leadership by teaching the three principles inspired by his recovery, so leaders can achieve balance, reclaim energy, and reach their full potential. 

 

John Warrillow | Value Builder System: What's Your Business Worth?
Value Builder System: What's Your Business Worth?

 

John Warrillow - Headshot 2Built to Sell - Cover Image

John Warrillow is the Founder and CEO of The Value Builder System™, a sales and marketing software for business advisors to find, win, and keep their best clients. It combines tools and ready-made content for accountants, brokers, consultants, and financial advisors who focus on helping owners protect, grow and realize the value of their business.

John is the author of the bestselling book, Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You, which was recognized by both Fortune and Inc magazines as one of the best business books of 2011. Built to Sell has been translated into 12 languages. John has also authored The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry and The Art of Selling Your Business: Winning Strategies & Secret Hacks for Exiting on Top. This completes the trilogy of books which teach business owners how to build, accelerate, and harvest the value of their company.

As the host of Built to Sell Radio, John has interviewed hundreds of founders about their exit. Forbes ranked John’s podcast as one of the ten best podcasts for business owners.

Before founding The Value Builder System™, John started and exited four companies.

 

Steve Baker | The Great Game of Business: Educate, Empower, Engage
The Great Game of Business: Educate, Empower, Engage

 

Steve Baker 3The Great Game of Business

Steve coauthored Get in the Game as well as the update of the number one bestseller, The Great Game of Business—20th Anniversary Edition. Known for his engaging and irreverent style, Steve is a top-rated, sought-after speaker and coach on open-book management, strategy and execution, leadership, and employee engagement.

Steve Baker 2His audiences range from Harvard University to the Department of Defense, and he is a regular at Inc. magazine’s Inc. 5000 Conference. He has served on the Board of the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) and SRC Holding’s Ownership Culture Initiative.

Steve is an award-winning artist and lives in Springfield, Missouri, with his trophy wife, JoAnn, and three above-average children.

Robert “Cujo” Teschner | Accountable Leadership: Creating A Winning Team
Jennifer J Fondrevay | Navigating, Surviving and Thriving through Constant Organizational Change
Scott Wozniak, CEO of Swoz Consulting | Customer Experience Engine
Lauren Saidel-Baker | ITR Economics: An Economic Outlook for 2022 and Beyond
Jim Canfield | CEO Tools 2.0: How to Think, Lead, and Manage like a CEO
Chris McChesney | The 4 Disciplines of Execution
David Horsager, CEO of Trust Edge Leadership Institute | How Top Leaders and Organizations Drive Business Results through Trust
Frank Harrison & Leadership Team | t-factor: Transforming Workplace Cultures
Kris Boesch, CEO and Founder of Choose People | Choose People: How to Make Your Employees Happy & Your Company Money
Mark Sanborn, President of Sanborn & Associates, Inc. | Leading Forward: The Questions on Every Leader's Mind
Lamar Hunt, Jr., Founder of Loretto Properties, LLC
Mitch Holthus | Inspiring Leaders to Turn the Ordinary Into The Extraordinary
Byron Emmert, Senior Certified Consultant at Trust Edge Leadership Institute
Scot Hunsaker | Turning Your Employees into Owners
Cheryl Bachelder, Former CEO, Popeyes® Louisiana Kitchen, Inc. | Dare to Serve
David Green, CEO of Hobby Lobby | Giving It All Away… and Getting It All Back Again
John Ramstead | Transformational Leadership
Mark Sanborn, President of Sanborn & Associates, Inc. | Accelerate Leadership Effectiveness… Essentials to Maximize Influence and Impact
Brian Willingham | Everybody Matters…The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family
Acumen Panel | A higher standard of leadership: Strategies to Enhance Impact & Influence
Verne Harnish, Founder of Entrepreneurs’ Organization | Scaling Up
Dayton Moore + Rex Hudler | Crowning Leadership
Hayden Shaw | People Driven Results: Millennials
David Nelson | Tools for Talking When the Stakes are High
Roy West | Strengths Based Leadership: Maximizing your Impact Potential

Testimonials

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Acumen has really challenged my thought process as a leader. It’s a completely new foundation from which I’m trying to lead my organization, the people I work with on a daily basis, and most importantly, the impact I’m leaving behind.”
 

Andrew Stafford

President, Prevail Innovative Wealth Strategies
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Certainly from year to year we’ve experience double digit growth. And I attribute a good portion of that to my involvement with Acumen.”

Bob Meyers

President & CEO, iTedium

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