Consultants Academy
Building and Polishing Your Business
Consultants Academy is an intensive one-day workshop presented by experienced ACE consultants. Each presenter is an expert in their field, ready to share their business and some life lessons.
Walk away...
- Better equipped to work with current, new and even difficult clients
- Refine your scheduling control and management for greater productivity and personal time
- Differentiate your business through marketing
- High efficiency networking
- Focused web presence
- Advanced Social Media Use
- Listen, Learn, Practice!
- You’ll have several chances to try out new ideas, specific to your business, through our program exercises.
- Network with other Consultants
- Eat a GREAT lunch!
Consultants Academy is for:
- Experienced consultants
- Consultants seeking to expand their capabilities
- Those looking to increase their client pool
- New consultants or those considering a consulting career
- Those who find that consulting may offer a new profit center for their current business
The morning includes:
Legal/Financial Relationships
presented by Clay Atkinson and Sam Bishop (bios below)
This segment includes a discussion on how to structure your business and how to formalize your relationships with your clients.
Organizational and Time Management
presented by Jim Milliken and Denise Martin (bios below)
It is not easy working for yourself - and often by yourself. Learn self-discipline, how to motivate yourself and be productive.
After lunch, we concentrate on Sales and Marketing.
The first segment is presented by Rick Dacri and John Brubaker. (bios below) Learn how to differentiate your practice and position it for success.
Finally Ross Lasley (bio below) will help you make the most of your website and social media to build your business.
Registration:
Members: $109
Non-Members: $129
Thanks to our Sponsors:
Androscoggin Bank, a community bank with 143 years of heritage and tradition, serves individuals, businesses and government entities throughout Maine. With innovative products, personal service and top-notch technology, Androscoggin clients work with bankers who are focused on their financial prosperity.
Widely regarded as one of New England’s most entrepreneurial law firms, Bernstein Shur is a multi-service firm with more than 100 attorneys in offices in Maine and New Hampshire. Founded in 1915, the firm provides practical and innovative counsel in the areas of business law, litigation, and municipal law to clients throughout the region and around the world. Bernstein Shur is Maine’s exclusive member of Lex Mundi, the world’s leading association of independent law firms.
Our Speakers:
Clay Atkinson, Ericson & Mitchell Design and Marketing
Clay’s success is in defining potential core audiences and then evaluating their attributes, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors to cost effectively provide an approach to best reach and serve those customers. In addition, his broad base of industry experience translates into a meaningful and unique perspective on business opportunity.
Clay has held senior marketing management positions at General Mills, Parker Brothers, Land O’ Lakes, and Group Health (HealthPartners), where he was the VP of Marketing. Much of his career has focused on broad strategic direction for companies, brands, and new products. He has a proven record of providing strong strategic insights that translate into business success.
Clay co-founded and was a principal at Market Street Partners in Minneapolis for 24 years. He is now an independent consultant residing in Maine. He has a Masters Degree from UCLA Graduate School of Business and has taught MBA level strategic marketing courses.
Sam Bishop, Pace Consulting Group
Pace is a general management consulting firm working with small and medium sized businesses throughout New England in start-up, emerging and turnaround mode.
Sam has over 35 years assisting small and medium sized organizations to increase revenues, improve internal operations and reverse downturns. He has assisted over 145 companies in the areas of start-up, expansion, turnaround, financing, divesture/sale, diagnostic evaluation, motivational assessment and on-going implementation and nine in interim management positions including CEO, COO and CFO.
Jim Milliken, Jim Milliken Consulting
Jim Milliken is a consultant and coach who specializes in helping individuals and organizations become more productive and communicate more effectively. The goal is always higher quality of output with reduced quantity of input. For an organization, that means economy of resources and maximization of value. For an individual, it means reduction in waste and hassle, better results, greater satisfaction and more success.
Jim Milliken opened his independent consultancy in Project Management and Communication Skills in 1986, after 27 years as a newspaper writer, editor and manager.
Denise Martin, Good For You Coaching and Consulting
Denise Martin, a behavioral expert specializing in sales and productivity psychology, has been supporting sales teams and individuals with customized sales trainings and communication workshops for 10 years. Realistically every interaction between two people is a ‘sale’.
Corporate trainer on innovative thinking, sales coach, published author, college instructor, researcher, people analyst, and 4-time mother added to years of corporate managerial experience – together give her a unique perspective on human behavior, interactions, and relationships.
A graduate of Colby College and Coach University, Denise consults in the areas of all communication channels, productivity, employee engagement, customer service, and language specifics.
John Brubaker, The Sport of Business, LLC.
John Brubaker specializes in creating high performing teams and winning cultures. As in athletics when a coach guides his team to victory with a successful game plan; good coaching will guide you and your business to a more profitable result.
John is a performance consultant, speaker and the author of "The Coach Approach: Success Strategies From The Locker Room To The Board Room."
John Brubaker brings more than fifteen years of experience in Leadership Development, Coaching and Human Resource Management to his work. He is a 1992 graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology where he also earned a Master’s in Personnel Psychology in 1993. Brubaker has completed his doctoral level coursework in Sports Psychology at Temple University.
Rick Dacri, Dacri & Associates, LLC, offers senior executives and managers the human-relations expertise and hands-on skill they need to improve employee productivity and engagement, mitigate risk and position their organization for success. Dacri is the author of the book "Uncomplicating Management: Focus on Your Stars & Your Company Will Soar".
Rick brings more than 25 years of experience in senior management, organizational development, and human resources. He has consulted to a wide variety of industries, large and small, always bringing to the table a practical approach, sound advice, and a sense of humor.
His consulting firm, Dacri & Associates, LLC provides organizations with powerful, sustainable workforce strategies that are tailored to help them accomplish their goals and better use their greatest resource-employees.
Rick is a recognized national speaker and has authored over 300 articles for a range of business publications. He has been an Adjunct Professor at Clark University, Assumption College and Fitchburg State College, where he has taught courses in management, human resource management and organizational behavior. The media has frequently sought Rick’s opinion and he has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Business Week, MSN, Fox Business News, NPR, CBS, ABC, and SHRM.
Ross Lasley, The Internet Educator, has a strong and proven track record as an internet strategist and web professional. He has worked on the websites of thousands of companies since the early 1990’s. His efforts have generated more than $100 million in online sales for his clients.
Prior to consulting, Ross built a large IT enterprise employing over 100 staff. A company he successfully exited in 2005 before moving to Maine.
Ross is known for his unrepentantly geeky, unerringly accurate, and rock ‘em sock ‘em approach to working with clients and businesses. Ross gets the job done.
Please submit your payment via credit card (Visa, MasterCard and Discover NOT AmEx) or mail payment to:
Association for Consulting Expertise
110 Marginal Way #142
Portland ME 04101
