Azione Unlimited recently held two Leadership Symposiums in Chicago, one for marketing and the other for operations. Marketing directors and COOs shared ideas, made new friends, and learned from guest speakers. These sessions included keynotes, open discussions, roundtable discussions, and, for the first time ever, a charity donation of more than 150 fully loaded back-to-school backpacks to the Rosemont Helping Hand in Illinois.
Azione staff Caryn Daugherty and Dan Burnett organized, prepared, and managed the donation by collaborating with Rosemont Helping Hand’s president, Rick Drehobl, who invited summer camp kids to pick up the stuffed backpacks. Leadership Symposium attendees loaded the backpacks with glue sticks, pencils, whiteboards, folders, rulers, and other supplies to help families in need get a head start on back-to-school season. The charity donation was an immediate hit with the village, generating a long run of gratitude from families to the mayor’s office.
“This was, hands down, one of the nicest things that a company has done for our day camp kids,” says Drehobl. “We distributed backpacks to more than 150 kids who were so excited to pick out their own bags. In my 65 years of living in Rosemont and serving the local community, I’ve never seen kids so happy. This donation was such an incredibly classy and thoughtful action from Azione Unlimited, and everyone is so thankful for their actions.”
The Azione Unlimited Leadership Symposium is a recharged version of the Key Leader Meetings. The two-day meetings are aimed at bringing core management leaders together. It also invited vendor members Samsung, Savant, AudioControl, LG, Nortek, Liberty AV, Snap One, and Sonance to present on various educational and industry-specific topics.
“There is so much to be excited about this event,” says Richard Glikes, president of Azione Unlimited. “The owners of companies understand our value proposition and the real power is when you get buy-in and energy from the movers and shakers behind the scenes. Our symposiums were an energy-packed events with a very touching element added by being charitable. The emotion was second to none. It’s hard to put into words how good it feels to help!”
With an emphasis on creating efficient and meaningful processes, the operations meeting was loaded with topics including procurement, labor rates comparisons, billable hour management, service as a profit center, and adoption of emerging verticals. The Symposium also invited the founder of I Am Sayen and Connected Clusters Cubed coach Jason Sayen to present on two topics. His first topic honed in on every detail between initial contact and getting the referral from a job well done. Sayen further illustrated his topic by showing examples of efficient process maps and where hang-ups might happen. His second topic drilled down into maximizing the efficiency of software in a business.
The first-ever Marketing Symposium has also been deemed a massive success as it wove together a broad spectrum of topics into one highly concentrated meeting. Presentations and roundtable discussions around branding, email best practices, digital presence, referral regimens, social presence, and preferred software generated robust discussions around this pivotal role. Tom King bookended the first day of the Marketing Symposium with two discussions on client behavior and building successful lead-gen campaigns. King, the chief creative officer of 23K, used his experience working for SAP, AWS, and Oracle to underscore the cohesive thinking behind knowing who your customer is and how to offer a compelling solution efficiently. To wrap up the second day, the Symposium hosted Marcio Gomes of Boca Tech, who visualized and provided insight into the responsibilities of a successful marketing team.
For more information, visit AzioneUnlimited.com.
