In this workshop, we will reintroduce imagination and personality back into sales and jointly construct an approach to build a competitive advantage that is uniquely yours.

Mark Graham conducts an up close and personal fireside chat with two of the sharpest business minds in the industry about how we can ready ourselves for the next 5-10 years. PPAI’s CEO Paul Bellantone and ASI’s CEO Tim Andrews lead vast organizations that oversee, represent and advocate for our industry. This is only the second time in their careers that Paul and Tim have appeared on stage together.

From Hollywood story secrets to This-American-Life style narrative, you’ll learn how to brush off that stale 30-second elevator pitch by creating customer-centric stories that cut through the noise with a compelling and memorable message.

In this keynote, Lon McGowan shares success stories as well as a key lessons he’s learned from some prominent business failures. Lon founded what has become one of the industry’s most beloved companies, iClick as well as 2 additional companies outside the promotional products industry.

Mark and Catherine Graham kickoff the 2016 skucon Chicago conference at The Virgin Hotel.

Our guest today is Gill Thorpe, CEO and Managing Director of UK based The Sourcing Team. Gill got her start in the promotional products industry in 1996 and built The Sourcing Team into one of the country’s most innovative distributors. Gill and her team are in the eye of the Brexit Storm so who better to help us wrap our heads around what this means for the promotional products industry in Europe, North America and the rest of the world.

Through learning to brainstorm with others, you’ll be surprised by how your BIG IDEAS can suddenly evolve and take a different shape than how the idea was originally presented – and, with the help of others – maybe even get you past obstacles holding you back.

In this episode of skucast we’re going to spend some time with one of our most recent additions to the commonsku team, Joe Kemple. Joe is joining Aaron Kucherawy as a customer success representative and we couldn’t be more excited to have him on board!

This episode is all about content. We are going to talk about how to create excellent content and why this matters to the modern promotional products professional. Our guest is Kirby Hasseman, President of Hasseman Marketing and Communications. In addition to Kirby’s successful distributor business, he is also a speaker, blogger, podcaster, video personality and author. Kirby talks to us about how he balances the demands of running a business with these content efforts. We’ll also discuss the impact content has had on his business and how you can get started today with your own content program.

Our guest today is Patrick McHargue. Patrick is a promo industry innovator and co-founder of PromoPlacement, the industry's leading search and placement firm. In today’s episode we are going to explore the world of hiring and Patrick will share his hiring playbook.