Spring Meeting Sessions

   

Thursday, April 10th

General Session #1 

Steve McClatchy
Leading Relationships 
Radically Increase Engagement, Reduce Turnover, Eliminate Conflict, and Build High Performance Business Relationships 
8:30 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.

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Every business needs leaders that understand, not only how to lead the business, but how to lead the people in it. Communicating effectively, working with diverse multi-generational teams, setting clear expectations, giving feedback, navigating differing opinions, resolving conflict, working remotely, and holding others accountable can be the most important skills you will ever develop.  In this age where AI is threatening the very future of work, this presentation teaches skills that AI will never be able to. 

Steve will give insights into how to build relationships strong enough to handle the pressures and tensions inherent when building and leading a dynamic, engaged, fast changing, high-performance, collaborative team. 

After attending this presentation leaders will be able to:

• Use The 5 Levels of Maturity Framework to guide, coach, and mentor others to greater levels of performance.  
• Resolve conflict when it happens so it doesn’t slow down the pace of business. 
• Give feedback more consistently and more effectively to increase engagement. 
• Hold others accountable in a way that doesn’t damage trust and instead, builds loyalty.  
• Communicate, collaborate, and set expectations that improve teamwork. 
• Manage egos, immaturity, and games among team members. 
• Build a culture of high trust and high performance that will retain your top talent.  

If you are in business today, you are in the business of relationships, and this presentation is guaranteed to change the way you work, interact, solve problems, innovate, manage, and lead your business! 

Zack Kass
The Innovator’s Dilemma: Navigating Our AI Future - Pioneering the path towards an AI-empowered future – The Innovator’s Roadmap  
10:45 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
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Drawing on his vast experience in AI strategy and implementation, Zack offers a pragmatic approach to future-proofing your business.

He provides a forward-thinking perspective, sharing lessons learned, strategies adopted, and the transformative power of resilience in the face of relentless technological progression.

Zack navigates the challenges and opportunities that lie at the forefront of AI innovation. He dissects the paradoxical landscape where technology moves at an astounding pace, yet practical, scalable solutions remain elusive.

In this keynote, Zack highlights how innovators can transform these challenges into stepping stones to success in an AI-driven era.
 

General Session #3 

Jon Acuff
Dream, Plan, Do, Review: The Simple System the Best Teams in the World Always Use
1:15 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.
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When New York Times Bestselling author Jon Acuff got curious about why certain teams outperform the rest, he:

• Commissioned a research study with PhD Mike Peasley.
• Built a private online community of 20,000+ to test what he learned.
• Worked with more than 350 companies and teams.

Over Jon's years of research, there emerged a pattern. From Lexus to Walmart, Chick-fil-A to Microsoft, successful goal-setting always followed the same four stages: Dream, Plan, Do, Review. In the Dream stage, you answer the question, “What do we want to do?” In Plan, you answer, “How will we do it?” In Do, you simply ask, “Are we doing it?” In Review, “Did it work?”

If that is all it really takes, why isn't everybody doing this? Jon says that most people do, but they get stuck. Dreamers get stuck in the Dream stage; with 1,000 ideas and 0 actions. Perfectionists get stuck in the Plan stage; they'll change the world as soon as the plan is perfect. Procrastinators get stuck in the Do stage; they will always start tomorrow. Hustlers get stuck in the Review stage; all motion and very little mission, they are addicted to doing and are unwilling to stop long enough to review and see if they’re headed in the right direction.  At this moment in Jon's keynote is when the audience begins elbowing each other as they identify what’s been holding them back.  

Pulling from his nine books of research and resources, Jon laces his keynote with the humor that saw him open for Dolly Parton at the Ryman, and the ability to customize his message that makes him one of the most rebooked speakers on the market today, unleashing the tactical, actionable ways for audience members to apply DPDR immediately.

It’s a complicated world. Even picking something to entertain us on Netflix, Hulu, Prime, Apple+, and Max, can seem a chore. With 10,000 years worth of content to choose from, we still say. "There's nothing on," because cognitive overload has stressed us out to the point where we resort to watching reruns of The Office or Gilmore Girls. Business is no better. By the time you finish reading this sentence even more new tools, techniques, and regulations are available for your industry. How do successful teams and leaders make sense of all this chaos?  Attend Jon's session to find out! 

 

General Session #4 

Taylor Mackay and John Mackay
The Value of Financial Benchmarking
3:00 p.m. -  4:15 p.m.
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Many business owners may feel close involvement with their business operations lends a competitive edge that helps them to outperform the competition. However, relying solely on personal instincts without comparing performance to industry standards can limit any business's growth potential. Industry benchmarking offers just that comparison—an objective perspective which helps highlight the areas for improvement that may be overlooked with an over-reliance on instinct. 

AHTD’s Financial Benchmarking Report results from the study of our yearly financial benchmarking survey.  It focuses on the three profit drivers: growth, gross margin, and expenses and provides key insights into exactly how our membership's “high-profit firms” generate those better profit numbers.  This Spring Meeting general session will highlight some of the key performance statistics derived from past AHTD benchmarking studies and demonstrate how every automation business can be #BetterWithAHTD.

 

Friday, April 11th

General Session #1 

Pamela Barnum
Tactical Influence: The Superpower for Leaders
8:30 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.
Tactical Influence is vital to gaining trust, aligning efforts to pursue goals, inspiring positive change, and increasing revenue. Leveraging this "leader superpower" can improve team collaboration, spark curiosity, supercharge insight, and trigger empathy. In Pamela's keynote, attendees will learn to:

• Leverage talent with intentional communication cues for quicker decision-making.
• Inspire intrigue to increase productivity, creativity, and happiness, and determine how and when to best utilize it.
• Fearlessly communicate confidence and maintain a strong executive presence, even in times of uncertainty, using fear and doubt to supercharge insight and eliminate imposter syndrome. 
• Empower with empathy knowing that high-empathy-based environments have performance levels three times higher than low-empathy environments. 

When deployed well, Tactical Influence can be more than just a short-term strategy for changing employee attitudes, values, or behaviors to support a specific goal. These proven life skills can be employed to enhance essential outcomes and create a more engaged organizational culture. Discover this often-overlooked strategy for yourself and build a stronger, more productive, and more engaged organizational culture for YOUR business! 

 

General Session #2 

Brian Beaulieu
Economic Forecast 2025
10:45 a.m - 12:00 p.m.
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Inflationary pressures, high interest rates, tight labor market, and ongoing military conflicts are on the minds of most business leaders as they make plans for the rest of 2025 and prepare to enter 2026. Join us as Brian looks at the trends defining 2025, including mild growth rates, wage inflation, the consumer focus on finding deals, as well as the national housing shortage, and their affects on the overall economy. Use this session to learn which markets will experience growth and which are destined to continue to experience a lingering downside, and gain the confidence for enacting plans today to get the most out of the year ahead. Brian will highlight the anticipated experience of a few key markets, both domestic and global, and will give us all valuable insights in time to develop tactics and strategies to prepare to beat the cycle in 2025.